Memorial by Bryan Washington
Just as a reminder, here’s how I started the review on my first blog of Washington’s previous book, the short story collection ‘Lot’.
There is a buzz around Bryan Washington. With only two published books – this short story collection from 2019 and his novel, ‘Memorial’, from 2020 – he has garnered a heap of awards and ‘Lot’ was selected by Barack Obama as one of his books of 2019. Washington is young, black and gay and his subjects are race, sexuality, identity and that part of American society that has been disenfranchised from the American Dream. That is why I was drawn to this collection in the first place because of its stories’ pertinence. I expected to encounter a world, characters and issues far removed from my life, and they are. I also suspected that these stories might have been lauded because of who wrote them and the world they describe rather than for their craft; my suspicions were unfounded. Washington is a fine writer – more of that in a moment – but that doesn’t mean that the lives he describes and the deprived milieu and culture he explores were easy for me to respond to. This novel is probably not written for the likes of me… but I am getting ahead of myself.
As you can tell, I was pleased to have read ‘Lot’ and I feel the same about this novel. The point I made previously about the milieu and characters being outside my orbit – and that was my main reason for reading it – applies also to this book. That being said, the dilemma facing the two central protagonists, Mike and Benson, is universal – they are a few years into their relationship and are beginning to suspect that it may have run its course. The fact that Mike is Japanese, a decent chef working several jobs in not very decent restaurants, and Benson is a slightly buttoned up young black man who works in a day centre looking after disturbed children, and both have fraught, distant relationships with their respective families, only provides further complexity. As with ‘Lot’ the setting is Houston; they share an apartment in a black neighbourhood that is becoming more gentrified … white. Although both are educated and smart, there is a sense that both are drifting; and that’s the starting point for the story.
If the catalyst for what happens in this story is the state of Mike and Benson’s relationship, it manifests itself in a specific set of events. Mike’s mother, Mitsuko, is just about to arrive from Japan for an extended stay with Mike but, at the same time, Mike has decided to travel to Japan to stay with his terminally ill father, Eiju, whom he has not seen for several years. His motive for doing so seems more bound up with his own sense of disorientation about his relationship with Mike and the direction of his life. Benson and his mother are both bewildered by his decision and, in a repressed manner, furious with him. This first section is seen from Benson’s perspective and his unease about hosting a stranger, a middle aged Japanese woman, for an indeterminate period is clear and yet it emerges in a muted manner in-keeping with his emotionally controlled personality.
Now, in a different writer’s hands, Mitsuko and Benson would have gradually bonded over their love for Mike, and in some sense they do, but any hint of understanding is hard-won and complex. Theirs is a spiky relationship in a home without Mike. Mitsuko cooks for Benson whilst he goes out to work and then patiently but rather gruffily shows him how to cook the meals that she must have once shown to Mike. Mitsuko is waiting for Mike to return as well as trying to understand something about her son’s life by staying in his home and living with his partner. Benson, however, intensely re-examines his time with Mike but life also intervenes as the possibility of a different future emerges with the older brother and carer of one of the children from his work.
In the second section of the book we see events from Mike’s perspective. He is confused as to why he has decided to live with and care for his father whom he had rejected following Eiju’s drunken decline and abandonment of his family. In many ways, this father son relationship is a more aggressively spiky relationship than the one back in Houston. Yet, in the same hard won and complex manner, Mike and Eiju begin to evolve a companionable rhythm to their lives. Mike works alongside his father in the small, local bar he has set up and gradually takes charge as Eiju’s illness advances. He appreciates the sense of rough community that his father has created and has to reassess his options when Eiju offers him the bar after he dies. Like Benson, Mike constantly replays scenes from their relationship in his head and things are not only confused by his father’s offer but also the possibility of a new relationship.
It is at this point, in the final section of the book, that Mike returns home. The focus inevitably falls on what is going to happen to Mike and Benson and their life together. Some form of external perspective is provided, however, by a set piece where Benson’s family, including his estranged father, meet Mitsuko and Mike. There is something rather manufactured about this scene but nevertheless Washington handles it well. Deep familial scars are examined as Benson expresses his anger at the lack of support, especially from his father, when he experienced some difficult times with his sexuality in the past. Mike and Benson both reassess their understanding of one another as they learn about each other’s families and the way they perceive the young men’s relationship.
That makes the ending seem rather schematic and it’s really not. At the very end, there are no real answers about their relationship, other than the ones that the reader supplies. You feel that you know both men more deeply but certainly not fully. I have twice used the phrase “hard won” about the emotional progress made by the characters and, at times, this makes the book uncomfortable reading. There is a mixture of psychological honesty alongside disorientating complexity that reminded me of many of the short stories in ‘Lot’. Ultimately, I felt I knew these two men better but wasn’t sure that I liked the values and behaviour in their world which seems so far removed from my own. Yet, isn’t it a good thing to sometimes examine the lives of people one rarely encounters? Which, of course, brings me back to my first review.