{"title":"Bryan Washington","description":"\u003cp\u003eBryan Washington is an acclaimed author known for his poignant and beautifully crafted narratives that capture the complexities of family, relationships, and the ever-evolving dynamics of modern life. With his sharp and insightful storytelling, Washington invites readers into worlds that are both familiar and refreshingly new, offering perspectives that linger long after the last page is turned.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAmong his celebrated works is \u003cem\u003eFamily Meal\u003c\/em\u003e, a novel that delves into the intricate layers of friendship, love, and the ties that bind us together. In \u003cem\u003eLot\u003c\/em\u003e, a collection of interconnected stories set in Houston, Washington explores themes of identity and community with remarkable depth and empathy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAnother notable work, \u003cem\u003eMemorial\u003c\/em\u003e, intricately weaves the lives of two men navigating their relationship, showcasing Washington's deft ability in portraying human connection with honesty and warmth. His work \u003cem\u003ePalaver\u003c\/em\u003e further demonstrates his skill in depicting everyday lives with precision and care, touching on the universal yet deeply personal experiences we all share.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eClassified as general fiction, Bryan Washington's novels and stories transcend simple categorisation, offering profound insights into the human experience. For readers seeking heartfelt and thought-provoking literature, Bryan Washington's works are an essential addition to any collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"family-meal-by-bryan-washington-9781838954475","title":"Family Meal","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrowing up, TJ was Cam's boy next door. When Cam needed a home, TJ's parents—Mae and Jin—took him in. Their family bakery became Cam's safe place. Until he left, and it wasn't anymore.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYears later, Cam's world is falling apart. The love of his life, Kai, is gone, but his ghost keeps haunting Cam and won't let go. And Cam's not sure he wants to let go, not sure he's ready. When he has a chance to return to his hometown, to work in a gay bar clinging on in a changing city landscape, he takes it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBack in the same place as TJ, they circle each other warily, their banter electric with an undercurrent of betrayal, drawn together despite past and current drama. Family is family. But TJ is no longer the same person Cam left behind; he's had his own struggles. The quiet, low-key, queer kid—the one who stayed home—TJ's not sure how to navigate Cam: utterly cool, completely devastated, and self-destructing, crashing back into his world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhen things said—or left unsaid—become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Nourishment has many forms: eating croissants, sitting together at a table with bowls of curry, sharing history, confronting demons, growing flowers, showing up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis 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, and by their necessary presence, create a family.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46530400354540,"sku":"9781838954475","price":34.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20529573482842.jpg?v=1749255985"},{"product_id":"lot-by-bryan-washington-9781786497864","title":"Lot","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStories of a young man finding his place among family and community in Houston, from a powerful, emerging American voice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis 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, thriving, and dying across Houston's myriad neighbourhoods 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBryan 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, \u003ci\u003eLot\u003c\/i\u003e is about love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46531920265452,"sku":"9781786497864","price":23.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/1507683482824.jpg?v=1749292300"},{"product_id":"memorial-by-bryan-washington-9781838950088","title":"Memorial","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBenson 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBut 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBack 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, realising he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBoth 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMemorial\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46531981410540,"sku":"9781838950088","price":41.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20485703482842.jpg?v=1749297828"},{"product_id":"memorial-by-bryan-washington-9781838950101","title":"Memorial","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'This feels like a vision for the 21st-century novel... It made me happy' - Ocean Vuong, author of \u003ci\u003eOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e'Brilliantly details the smallest moments that mean the absolute most, the heartbreakingly human limitations of how we love one another' - Kiley Reid, author of \u003ci\u003eSuch a Fun Age\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBenson 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFunny and profound, \u003ci\u003eMemorial\u003c\/i\u003e is about family in all its strange forms, becoming who you're supposed to be and the outer limits of love.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e'Funny and moving... \u003ci\u003eMemorial\u003c\/i\u003e confirms Washington as a writer not just to watch, but to read now' - \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e'A masterclass in empathy... Washington transforms revelations into cliff-hangers, like Elena Ferrante. He writes layered sex scenes, like Garth Greenwell' - \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46998493266156,"sku":"9781838950101","price":27.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20485833482842.jpg?v=1763217669"},{"product_id":"palaver-by-bryan-washington-9781805463962","title":"Palaver","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eSuch a joy\u003c\/em\u003e – Ocean Vuong\u003cbr\u003e‘It’ll break and remake your heart’ – Andrew Sean Greer\u003cbr\u003eA gorgeous book – RO Kwon\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 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 America, particularly his mother, whose preference for the son's troubled homophobic brother 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSeparated only by the son's cat, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSharing 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47341006225644,"sku":"9781805463962","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/db913d8fd2e7a6e8a83acce0b7b82fdf.jpg?v=1772190367"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/bryan-washington.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}