Memorial Book (Paperback)

RELEASE DATE - 7 OCTOBER 2021

'This feels like a vision for the 21st-century novel... It made me happy'
Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

'Brilliantly details the smallest moments that mean the absolute most, the heartbreakingly human limitations of how we love one another' Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age

Benson and Mike are two young guys who have been together for a few years - good years - but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye.

In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past, while back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted...

Funny and profound, Memorial is about family in all its strange forms, becoming who you're supposed to be and the outer limits of love.

A tender, wistful, often profound story about a deteriorating romance between two twentysomething men... Lo-fi and intimate ― Sunday Times

Funny and moving... Memorial confirms Washington as a writer not just to watch, but to read now ― The Times

A masterclass in empathy... Washington transforms revelations into cliff-hangers, like Elena Ferrante. He writes layered sex scenes, like Garth Greenwell ― Guardian

A tender and moving story about the ties that bind us to those we love, sometimes against our better judgment or our strongest will ― The Telegraph

Washington is a technically dazzling writer ― Alan Hollinghurst, New York Review of Books

A triumph ― Paul Bailey, Literary Review

Dazzling... With crackling dialogue and gimlet-eyed humour, Washington paints a vivid, poignant portrait of how love, romantic and familial, is weathered and ultimately deepened by time ― Esquire

A fresh, vibrant love story that interweaves race, queerness, nationality, family, and intimacy with narrative ease ― Vogue

Brilliantly details the smallest moments that mean the absolute most, the heartbreakingly human limitations of how we love one another ― Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age

Memorial casts a fresh take on the American family that becomes truer because of its disparate origins, the queerness of its genesis, and the buoyed wonder it finds in surviving grief and loss towards the rare and forgiving ground of difficult, hard-won love.

― Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

A tour de force, truly unlike anything I've read before. Bryan Washington's take on love, family, and responsibility is as complicated and true as life itself. I can't stop thinking about it. ― Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto

Stunning. Everything happening in Memorial is so intimate, sensual, and wise. I love this book. ― Tommy Orange, author of There There

A true page-turner. I was entranced. ― Jacqueline Woodson, author of Another Brooklyn

Made me think about the nature of love, and family, and anger, and grief, and love again. ― Jasmine Guillory, author of The Proposal

Bryan Washington is an expert in illuminating the way we love. It is a beautiful heartbreak. ― Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk

It is about everything that matters in life. ― Katie Kitamura, author of A Separation

Wryly funny, gently devastating ― Entertainment Weekly

A beautiful, unusual examination of the difference between love and care, and what happens when they merge ― Washington Post

This book is so poignant and beautiful, asking questions about what it means to live a life and what it means to love ― LitHub

Implicit in a book about changing relationships and titled Memorial is the question of what is being preserved. The book preserves Houston and Osaka. It preserves the feeling of being young and lost. It preserves the food that gives us comfort and nourishment and purpose. ― The New York Times

Wonderfully irreverent and heart-meltingly tender ― Oprah Magazine

A very different kind of love story... Washington's deeply touching (and deeply funny) look at love, sex, family, grief, and the ways in which we take care of each other is a revelation, a reminder of how powerful a novel can be ― Refinery29

Bryan Washington writes some of contemporary fiction's most tender stories... Queer love, family dynamics, Houston settings, and cooking... the young writer has brilliantly united them all in his new novel ― New York Observer

Big-hearted and moving ― Harper's Bazaar