Bryan Washington

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss. Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time? When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.

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Benson et Mike vivent à Houston et sont ensemble depuis quelques années – de nombreuses années – sans vraiment savoir pourquoi ils sont toujours en couple. Il y a le sexe, bien sûr, les petits plats que Mike cuisine pour Benson, et puis, bon, ils s’aiment, c’est comme ça. Alors que sa mère débarque au Texas, Mike apprend que son père est en train de mourir à Osaka et il part lui dire adieu. À l’autre bout du monde, il découvre la vérité sur sa famille et son passé. De retour chez lui, débute une étrange colocation avec sa mère et Benson. Une nouvelle dynamique s’installe. Aux deux hommes de découvrir si elle consolidera leur histoire ou aura raison de leur amour. Traduit de l'anglais (États-Unis) par Laurent Treves Finaliste du Prix du Roman Page/America 2022 « Dans son premier roman, l’Américain Bryan Washington tente de dépeindre tout ce qui fait la complexité des relations entre les êtres. » Jean-Claude Perrier, Livres Hebdo « En faisant osciller sa narration entre le point de vue de l’un et de l’autre, Bryan Washington tresse un roman qui interroge à cœur l’intimité, mais aussi le chagrin ou les traumas. » Le Vif « Une réinterprétation, par l’intimité et le souvenir, de ce melting pot qui fait l'Amérique. » Le Monde des Livres « Houston-Osaka est un récit enlevé, où le feel-good tutoie le plombant. Un camaïeu de vie dans lequel, au détour d'une anecdote ou d'un drame, il y a toujours moyen de se questionner sur les liens du sang, l'impact de l'identité sur l'existence, l'existence ou non de l'amour éternel. Le cul est parfois cru et les sentiments à fleur de peau. Et c'est si beau. » Slate « Un chassé-croisé où il est question de la difficulté à se sentir chez soi, de la compréhension de l’autre, de l’attention à ne pas blesser. Le tout entrelacé avec mélancolie et une lumineuse finesse. » Victorine de Oliveira, La Vie

Stories of a young man finding his place among family and community in Houston, from a powerful, emerging American voice. In the city of Houston—a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America—the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys. This boy and his family experience the tumult of living in the margins, the heartbreak of ghosts, and the braveries of the human heart. The stories of others living and thriving and dying across Houston's myriad neighborhoods are woven throughout to reveal a young woman's affair detonating across an apartment complex, a rag-tag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, and a reluctant chupacabra. Bryan Washington's brilliant, viscerally drawn world leaps off the page with energy, wit, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot is about love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms. Lockwood -- Alief -- 610 North, 610 West -- Shepherd -- Wayside -- Bayou -- Lot -- South Congress -- Navigation -- Peggy Park -- Fannin -- Waugh -- Elgin

A funny, sexy, profound dramedy about two young people at a crossroads in their relationship and the limits of love. Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've 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 in Texas 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. 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. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it. Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end. Memorial is a funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the limits of love.

A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington. In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor, drinking his nights away with friends at a gay bar. He’s entangled in a sexual relationship with a married man, and while he has built a chosen family in Japan, he is estranged from his family in Houston, particularly his mother, whose preference for the son’s oft-troubled homophobic brother, Chris, pushed him to leave home. Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, ten years since they’ve last seen each other, the mother arrives uninvited on his doorstep. Separated only by the son’s cat, Taro, the two of them bristle against each other immediately. The mother, wrestling with memories of her youth in Jamaica and her own complicated brother, works to reconcile her good intentions with her missteps. The son struggles to forgive. But as life begins to steer them in unexpected directions— the mother to a tentative friendship with a local bistro owner, and the son to cautiously getting to know a new patron of the bar—the two of them begin to see each other more clearly. Sharing meals and conversations and an eventful trip to Nara, both mother and son try the best they can to define where “home” really is—and whether they can find it even in each other. Written with understated humor and an open heart, moving through past and present and across Houston, Jamaica, and Japan, Bryan Washington’s Palaver is an intricate story of family, love, and the beauty of a life among others.

Cam è straziato dalla perdita di Kai, l'amore della sua vita, ucciso dalla polizia di Los Angeles durante un controllo. Il suo fantasma gli appare di continuo, regalandogli attimi di tenerezza e di profondo smarrimento. Senza più una direzione, Cam torna a Houston. Qui, orfano, è cresciuto insieme a TJ e ai suoi genitori, lavorando nella panetteria di famiglia che TJ continua a portare avanti dopo la morte del padre. Ma il legame tra i due ragazzi, fraterno eppure carnale, appartiene al passato, ed è stato segnato dai rispettivi lutti. Di fronte a un Cam triste e autodistruttivo – che cerca di annullarsi attraverso le droghe, il sesso occasionale e il rifiuto del cibo, che nella relazione precedente era simbolo di cura e condivisione – TJ mette da parte i rancori e decide di accompagnare l'amico nella sua lenta rinascita. E stando vicino a Cam trova la forza di prendere in mano la propria vita, aprendosi all'amore che non ha mai pensato di meritare.Pranzo di famiglia è un'ode agli affetti più puri e ai piaceri della vita, come il cibo e la compagnia delle persone care. Bryan Washington racconta l'amore e il lutto, la ricerca del proprio posto nel mondo quando ogni riferimento sembra perduto, e celebra il potere della famiglia di sangue e di quella elettiva, stelle di una stessa galassia, capaci di portare luce e calore anche nei momenti più bui.

In Bryan Washington’s novella, “Server,” the narrator finds himself living in two worlds—one where he is an English teacher in Japan, and the other, where he plays a video game with his best friend, who is dead.

LoveIsLoveIsLoveIsLove รักคือรักคือรักคือรักคือรัก นวนิยายอเมริกันที่เล่าเกี่ยวกับทุกสิ่งอันซึ่งสำคัญในชีวิต นวนิยายขำขันที่เต็มไปด้วยความเศร้า เบนสันกับไมก์เป็นคู่รักเกย์ อยู่ด้วยกันที่เมืองฮูสตัน ไมก์เป็นคนเชื้อสายญี่ปุ่น เป็นพ่อครัวอยู่ร้านอาหารเม็กซิกัน ส่วนเบนสันเป็นคนผิวสี เป็นครูพี่เลี้ยงในสถานรับดูแลเด็กเล็ก ทั้งสองเป็นแฟนกันมาสามสี่ปี ถึงจะเป็นปีดีๆ แต่ตอนนี้ทั้งสองไม่แน่ใจว่าพวกเขายังเป็นคู่รักกันอยู่ไหม เรื่องเซ็กส์ แน่นอนว่าไม่ย่อหย่อน ไหนจะอาหารที่ไมก์ทำให้เบนสันกิน แต่เมื่อไมก์ได้ข่าวว่าพ่อที่เขาไม่ค่อยได้รู้จักมักจี่กำลังจะตายที่โอซากา เขาก็ตัดสินใจบินไปกล่าวลาเป็นครั้งสุดท้าย ปล่อยให้เบนสันต้อนรับขับสู้มิตสึโกะ แม่ของไมก์ผู้บินมาเยี่ยมลูกชาย เรื่องราวรักแรกอันยิ่งใหญ่ เรื่องของครอบครัวในทุกความหมายในทุกรูปแบบ การกลายเป็นคนที่ควรจะเป็น และข้อจำกัดของความรัก Best Book of 2020: New York Times, TIME, The Washington Post, NPR, New York Public Library, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Real Simple และอื่นๆ