Memorial

The stellar debut novel of two young men falling in and out of love, from the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize 2020.

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

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

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

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

Washington is a technically dazzling writer

A triumph

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

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

Brilliantly details the smallest moments that mean the absolute most, the heartbreakingly human limitations of how we love one another

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.

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.

Stunning. Everything happening in Memorial is so intimate, sensual, and wise. I love this book.

A true page-turner. I was entranced.

Made me think about the nature of love, and family, and anger, and grief, and love again .

Bryan Washington is an expert in illuminating the way we love . It is a beautiful heartbreak .

It is about everything that matters in life .

Wryly funny, gently devastating

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

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

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.

Wonderfully irreverent and heart-meltingly tender

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

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

Big-hearted and moving

Bryan Washington writes quiet. His characters methodically chop cabbage, or slide silently from room to room. Then, bam. A quick, elliptical conversation will smack you sideways with its heft and resonance.

This sensitive novel illustrates the deeply individual ways we search for a sense of home.

This intimate story is about the families we are born into and the families we choose for ourselves... a quiet, sensual exploration of how we decide who we stick around for.

Not only an exploration of a kaleidoscopically diverse America... but a moving portrait of two young men who are figuring out exactly who they are in this world. Anyone who enjoyed Washington's dreamlike yet textured meditations on life in Houston in Lot will be enchanted with Memorial.

At once a love story, a tale of self-actualization, and an ode to family in every sense of the word.

Washington creates two men so real it feels like even though the book ended, they will keep on living and figuring it out and making mistakes and falling down and getting back up again.

With wit and humor, Washington tackles race, class, identity and queerness... In a story about first loves and family, both men will change as they discover their own truths.

At once fresh and new and daring, while also feeling wholly familiar

A love story so multifaceted and emotionally nuanced as to feel transformative

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.

[Washington's] ability with writing the sensual pleasures of making and eating food is a good way of understanding his ability as a novelist to write about the human mind. It's such a beautiful book . . . a pure pleasure.

Extraordinary. . . . Washington writes with ease, like a juggler who is adding in new objects all the time, except the book ends with everything aloft instead of in hand. . . . It can be difficult to share your life with someone; Washington somehow explains this anew. Memorial , on the other hand, is easy to share.

I really loved this book. It's tender and touching

Brilliant

Set between Houston, Texas, and the Japanese city of Osaka, this is a tender, wistful, often profound story about a deteriorating romance between two twentysomething men. It deepens themes from Washington's short stories: the meaning of community, the power of food to bring people together and the impact of absent fathers.

Bryan Washington is a writer from Houston. His fiction and essays have appeared in, among other publications, the New York Times , New York Times Magazine , the New Yorker , the BBC , Vulture and the Paris Review . He's also a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 winner, the recipient of an Ernest J. Gaines Award, a PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize finalist, a National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize finalist, the recipient of an O. Henry Award and the winner of the 2020 International Dylan Thomas Prize.

BryWashing.com / @BryWashing