Memorial – the debut novel – by Bryan Washington is a startlingly display of intimacy and empathy between families and within relationships. Pick up a copy of the novel here.
When Benson is left with his partner Mike’s mother, when Mike goes to leave to see his dying father, the two are forced to bond, even despite the fact that the relationship itself – between Mike and Benson – is on the cusp of disintegration.
The novel is formed in three sections – the first focussing around Benson left in Houston with Mike’s mother, the second around Mike in Osaka as his father is dying and the third around the relationship between Mike and Benson when Mike returns.Washington shows incredible poise in his handling of the delicate relationships between the characters, his handling of interracial relationships and the disintegration of romance and daily intimacies. Washington exercises incredible restraint in his pacing of the novel, balancing the steady unravelling of the relationships with a steady pace moving between the start of the relationship to its current context. There are so many layers in the novel and intricacies in how a relationship can come together and fall apart – offering the benefit of the dual perspective, seen from Benson and Mike’s individual perspectives. It is in these shifting perspectives that the real tensions of the novel are created.
Memorial is a phenomenal debut novel by Bryan Washington that positions him as an author capable of handling intimacy and its nuances with zeal.
