Bryan Washington lit up 2019 with "Lot," his remarkable collection of linked short stories set in Houston.
Washington's voice — funny, profane, angry, tender, unblinking — leapt from the page in a way that felt desirable, new and necessary.
Now comes "Memorial," Washington's debut novel. Good as it is, it's not "Lot."
That said, the novel has a lot going for it, one of the best things being that it's by Washington. It's fascinating to watch such a brilliant writer of short fiction expand into the longer form, going deeper into his main characters, who are at once hard to love and hard to forget.
Ben and Mike, millennials who've been together for four years, share an apartment in Houston's historically Black Third Ward. Ben is Black and HIV-positive. Mike is Asian American, born in Japan and raised in Texas. Ben works at a day-care center, and Mike has cooking-related jobs.
Each man has parents so terrible — mean, alcoholic, self-absorbed, neglectful — that collectively they paint a bleak picture of their generation.
At the novel's outset, Mitsuko, Mike's sharp-tongued, antagonistic mom, flies back to Texas from Japan to visit Mike and Ben just as Mike announces he's going to Japan to reunite with his long-absent father, who is dying of cancer.
This leaves Ben and Mitsuko as odd-couple roommates. It also sets up a long middle section narrated by Mike in Osaka, where his misanthropic father, Eiju, runs a small bar and restaurant that caters to Japanese regulars.
