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What it argues
Memorial begins with a swap: Benson, a Black American childcare worker in Houston, and his Japanese boyfriend Mike are in a troubled relationship when Mike's estranged father calls from Japan — he is dying. Mike flies to Osaka. His mother, Mitsuko, flies from Osaka to Houston. For several weeks, Benson and Mitsuko — who have never met — share Mike's apartment while Mike tries to reconnect with the father he resents. The novel alternates perspectives between the two households and the two men.
On the surface this is a romantic comedy setup. In practice it's a quiet, precise novel about families as ecosystems of unspoken injury and unexpressed love. Mitsuko is not comic relief; she is a fully realized person with her own grief, her own opacity, her own way of showing care through cooking. Benson and Mike's relationship is troubled in ways that are never reduced to a single cause. Washington is interested in the accumulation of small failures and accommodations that define long-term intimacy more than in dramatic ruptures.
What it gets right
- 1.
The novel treats queer domesticity — the mundane sharing of space and time — as worthy of the same literary attention as crisis or drama.
- 2.
Food is the primary language of emotional expression throughout; meals communicate what characters cannot say directly, and the meaning is usually legible to the reader even when invisible to the characters.
- 3.
Mitsuko's arrival reframes Benson and Mike's relationship from outside, the way a stranger in a shared space will; her perspective is neither neutral nor cruel, just different.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Bryan Washington is an American writer from Houston, Texas. His debut short story collection Lot (2019) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. Memorial, his debut novel published in 2020, was named one of the best books of the year by numerous publications and won the Dylan Thomas Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Vulture, and the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Houston.
