Memorial: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel) - Softcover

Washington, Bryan

 
9780593087282: Memorial: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593087283 ISBN 13: 9780593087282
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, O, the Oprah Magazine, Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Refinery29, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, and Lit Hub

“A masterpiece.” —NPR

“No other novel this year captures so gracefully the full palette of America.” —The Washington Post

“Wryly funny, gently devastating.” —Entertainment Weekly

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.
 
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.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He received the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award for his first book, Lot, which was also a finalist for the NBCC’s John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, BuzzFeed, Bon Appétit, and GQ, among other publications. He lives in Houston.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1.

Mike’s taking off for Osaka, but his mother’s flying into Houston.
           
Just for a few weeks, he says.
           
Or maybe a couple of months, he says. But I need to go.
           
The first thing I think is: fuck.

The second’s that we don’t have the money for this.

Then, it occurs to me that we don’t have any savings at all. But Mike’s always been good about finances, always cool about separating his checks. It’s something I’d always taken for granted about him.
 
Now, he’s saying that he wants to find his father. The man’s gotten sick. Mike wants to catch him before he goes. And I’m on the sofa, half-listening, half charging my phone.
           
You haven’t seen your mom in years, I say. She’s coming for you. I’ve never met her.
           
I say, You don’t even fucking like your dad.
           
True, says Mike. But I already bought the ticket.
           
And Ma will be here when I’m back, says Mike. You’re great company. She’ll live.
           
He’s cracking eggs by the stove, slipping yolks into a pair of pans. After they’ve settled, he salts them, drizzling mayonnaise with a few sprigs of oregano. Mike used to have this thing about sriracha, he’d pull a hernia whenever I reached for it, but now he squeezes a faded bottle over my omelette, rubbing it in with the spatula.
           
I don’t ask where he’ll stay in Japan. I don’t ask who he’s staying with. I don’t ask where his mother will sleep here, in our one bedroom apartment, or exactly what that arrangement will look like. The thing about a moving train is that, sometimes, you can catch it. Some of the kids I work with, that’s how their families make it into this country. If you fall, you’re dead. If you’re too slow, you’re dead. But if you get a running start, it’s never entirely gone.
           
So I don’t flip the coffee table. Or one of our chairs. I don’t key his car or ram it straight through the living room. After the black eye, we stopped putting our hands on each other -- we’d both figured, silently, it was the least we could do.

Today, what I do is smile.

I thank Mike for letting me know.

I ask him when he’s leaving, and I know that’s my mistake. I’m already reaching to toss my charger before he says it, tomorrow.
 
*
                                                           
We’ve been fine. Thank you for asking.
 
*
                                                                       
Our relationship is, what, four years old? But that depends on how you count. We haven’t been to a party in months, and when we did go to parties, at first, no one knew we were fucking. Mike just stood to the side while whatever white girl talked her way into my space, then he’d reach up over my shoulder to slip a finger into my beer.

Or he’d sneeze, stretch, and wipe his nose with my shirt sleeve.

Or he’d fondle my wallet, slowly, patting it back into place.

Once, at a dinner, right under the table, he held court with a hand in my lap. Running his thumb over the crotch. Every now and again, someone would look and you could tell when they finally saw. They’d straightened their backs. Smile a little too wide. Then Mike would ask what was wrong, and they’d promise it was nothing, and he’d go right back to cheesing, never once nodding my way.
 
We knew how we looked. And how we didn’t look. But one night, a few weeks back, at a bar crawl for Mike’s job, all it took was a glance at us. He works at a coffee shop in Montrose. It’s this fusion thing where they butcher rice bowls and eggrolls -- although, really, it’s Mexican food, since unless your name is Mike that’s who’s cooking.

They’d been open for a year. This was their anniversary celebration. Mike volunteered us to help for an hour, flipping tortillas on a burner by the DJ.

I felt miserable. Mike felt miserable. Everyone who passed us wore this look that said, Mm. They touched our shoulders. Asked how long we’d been together. Wondered where we’d met, how we’d managed during Harvey, and the music was too fucking loud so Mike and I just sort of shrugged.
 
*
 
I don’t say shit on our way to the airport to pick up his mother, and I don’t say shit when Mike parks the car. IAH sits outside of Houston’s beltways, but there’s always steady traffic lining the highway. When Mike pulls up to Arrivals, he takes out the keys, and a line shimmers behind us, this tiny constellation of travelers.
 
Mike’s got this mustache now. It wavers over his face. He usually clips all of that off, and now I think he looks like a caricature of himself. We sit beside the terminal, and we can’t have the most fucked up situation here, but still. You have to wonder.

I wonder.

I wonder if he wonders.

We haven’t been good at apologizing lately. Now would be a nice time.

The airport sees about 111,500 visitors a day, and here we are, two of its most ridiculous.

Hey, says Mike.

He sighs. Hands me the keys. Says he’ll be right back with his mother.

If you leave us stranded in the parking lot, says Mike, we’ll probably find you.
 
*
 
It took all of two dates for him to bring up Race. We’d gone to an Irish bar tucked behind Hyde Park. Everyone else on the patio was white. I’d gotten a little drunk, and when I told Mike he was slightly shorter than optimal, he clicked his tongue, like, what took you so long.
           
What if I told you you’re too polite, said Mike.
           
Fine, I said.
           
Or that you’re so well-spoken.

I get it. Sorry.
           
Don’t be sorry, said Mike, and then he boxed my shoulder.

It was the first time we’d touched that night. The bartender glanced our way, blinking.
           
I just hope you see me as a fully...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593087283
ISBN 13 
9780593087282
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
385
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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