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Memorial

Memorial

Current price: $30.99
Publication Date: February 3rd, 2021
Publisher:
Thorndike Press Large Print
ISBN:
9781432885120
Pages:
447

Reading Memorial is like sitting down with a dear friend, asking ‘What’s going on with you?’ and settling in for much-needed catch-up on life, love, heartache, and family. Washington’s writing is so intimate and direct that you feel the exhilaration, frustration, and uncertainty that Benson and Mike feel about their relationships, both with one another and with their families, which inspires a heart-felt connection to these characters that is hard to find in the world during socially distant times.

Colleen Ellis, Lark and Owl Booksellers, Georgetown, TX
November 2020 Indie Next List

Mike has dropped everything to be with his absentee father as he succumbs to cancer in Japan, and Benson is left in their one-room apartment in Texas with Mike’s mother. This sweet book is a rumination on what tethers us to one another.

Hillary Smith, Copperfield's Books, Sebastopol, CA
Winter 2022 Reading Group Indie Next List

Description

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE SEASON BY:
Wall Street Journal Washington Post CBS Sunday Morning Good Morning America People Time New York Magazine Buzzfeed ● Parade ● USA Today ● Esquire ● Harper's Bazaar Popsugar Goodreads Boston Globe Minneapolis Star Tribune Refinery 29 New York Observer Good Housekeeping The Week Bookpage The Millions Kirkus Publishers Weekly

"This book, in what feels like a new vision for the 21st century novel, made me happy." --Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

"This book made me think about the nature of love, and family, and anger, and grief, and love again." --Jasmine Guillory, author of The Wedding Date and The Proposal

A funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the limits of love.

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years -- good years -- but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.

But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.

Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end.

About the Author

Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree, and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His first book, the story collection Lot, was a finalist for the NBCC's John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. Lot was a New York Times Notable Book, one of Dwight Garner's top ten books of the year, and on best-of-the-year lists from Time, NPR, Vanity Fair, BuzzFeed, and many more. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, McSweeney's Quarterly, Tin House, One Story, Bon Appétit, GQ, The Awl, and Catapult. He lives in Houston.