


Whether the dish was handed to them in a recipe book or recited to them by an abuelita.

Whether they were taught by their mother or father, or while working the line in a corporate restaurant or a mom and pop. You can learn a lot about someone’s home based on the meal they make for their guests. Who we pass our food on to, whether it be the home-cooked meals we prepare or the neighborhood spots we share, shows us who and how we love. What we eat, the tastes we prefer, how we cook, and how we learn to cook makes up who we are. In a world where there is not much one can physically hold on to, one of the few things Benson, Mike, and Mitsuko can grasp is cooking the food they eat and crave.Ĭooking, or at the very least eating, is a human necessity and a key part of one’s identity. Through the preparation of food, the two are slowly constructing a home-and an heirloom of their shared home-together. And by watching her cook, Benson too is feeling more at home with Mitsuko in his space. By cooking, unbeknownst to Benson at the time, she is sharing an heirloom, a story, that tells him more about Mike and herself more than any verbal response she could give him to his question would. By cooking, she is starting to feel more at home in Benson’s apartment, and with Benson himself. They’re just given to you.” Mitsuko tells Benson this while she is cooking. Mitsuko says that stories are heirlooms, explaining that they are “a personal thing. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.Early on in Bryan Washington’s Memorial, Benson asks Mitsuko for a story about her son (and Benson’s partner), Mike. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love.
When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time? TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss.Ĭam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died.
