Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kikilarouge 's review for:
Memorial
by Bryan Washington
4.5 - “That loving a person means letting them change when they need to. And letting them go when they need to. And that doesn’t make them any less of a home. Just maybe not one for you. Or only for a season or two. But that doesn’t diminish the love. It just changes forms.” ~ Tan
This started off a bit slow for me but I ended up really loving it. Set in Houston, it’s told from the POV of Benson and Mike who are at a crossroads in their relationship. Mike has to suddenly go back to Japan to see his terminally ill Dad and Benson ends up staying in their apartment with Mike’s Mom whom he has just met. This is a beautifully nuanced novel about all the relationships we encounter in life - partners, parents, siblings - and the challenges we face navigating them over the years. Such memorable characters including Mitsuko (my fave!) and passages:
“Ma must’ve taken the photo when we were in Cali. I don’t remember her doing that. But I guess that’s the thing: we take our memories wherever we go, and what’s left are the ones that stick around, and that’s how we make a life.”~ Mike
And this crushingly beautiful way of describing what the LGBTQ+ community deal with in their daily lives:
“There’s this phenomenon that you’ll get sometimes – but not too often, if you’re lucky – where is someone you think you know says something about your gayness that you weren’t expecting at all. Ben called it a tiny earthquake. I don’t think he was wrong. You’re destabilized, is the point. How much just depends on where the quake originates, the fault lines.” ~ Mike
And the ending? Perfection.
This started off a bit slow for me but I ended up really loving it. Set in Houston, it’s told from the POV of Benson and Mike who are at a crossroads in their relationship. Mike has to suddenly go back to Japan to see his terminally ill Dad and Benson ends up staying in their apartment with Mike’s Mom whom he has just met. This is a beautifully nuanced novel about all the relationships we encounter in life - partners, parents, siblings - and the challenges we face navigating them over the years. Such memorable characters including Mitsuko (my fave!) and passages:
“Ma must’ve taken the photo when we were in Cali. I don’t remember her doing that. But I guess that’s the thing: we take our memories wherever we go, and what’s left are the ones that stick around, and that’s how we make a life.”~ Mike
And this crushingly beautiful way of describing what the LGBTQ+ community deal with in their daily lives:
“There’s this phenomenon that you’ll get sometimes – but not too often, if you’re lucky – where is someone you think you know says something about your gayness that you weren’t expecting at all. Ben called it a tiny earthquake. I don’t think he was wrong. You’re destabilized, is the point. How much just depends on where the quake originates, the fault lines.” ~ Mike
And the ending? Perfection.