Masterful ... What makes Washington’s writing about family so refreshing and complex is how he shows the ways people attempt to demonstrate the emotions they otherwise have trouble expressing to the ones they hold dear ... Family Meal juggles a lot...but Washington lays it all out with the control and artistry of a ballet choreographer. Each story line gives the other strength.
A tornado of feelings, from guilt and fury to patience and empathy. It picks at the scabs of humanity’s failures with eyes wide open while simultaneously showing us how to be humble, how to be honest and how to love ... For anyone who’s read Washington’s multiple-award-winning first novel, Memorial, you know he has a knack for measured storytelling that builds momentum and gradually fills in holes before culminating in a finale that washes over you like a giant torrent of meaning and consequences that leave you gasping for air ... Washington’s other gift is creating viscerally vulnerable characters and allowing their refreshingly open conversations to flow, showing just how hard — but ultimately rewarding — facing difficult issues head-on can be ... Wise.
The broken queer men of color at the center of Bryan Washington’s second novel, Family Meal, are not mired in clichéd struggles of identity, representation or political victimhood. They are written as neither symbols nor archetypes but as an achingly and beautifully etched ensemble of young Americans learning to navigate a more universal and human struggle: grief ... Washington is equally adept at capturing the moods and sexiness of the city’s threatened queer spaces in writing that moves with a brisk, musical clip ... Washington is a generous and gentle writer, with a profound capacity to face the cruelty and pain of contemporary American life while simultaneously offering his characters — and readers – an expansive space for self-forgiveness, hope and nourishment..
Delectable ... The story is told in prose inviting enough that it’s easy to let the deliberate text formatting of Family Meal slide by without comment ... Heartbreaking, haunting, and harrowing one moment, Family Meal just as effortlessly showcases love, joy and passion the next. Like any good meal, this novel left me well fed and with plenty to chew on. I can’t wait to see what Washington cooks up next.
Washington...has always shined when describing cooking and eating ... At times feels like a reworking of a well-known recipe, drawn from a pantry of ingredients Washington has used in previous works ... Cam’s narrative voice is more spare than others who have told the stories in his previous work, the lines short and staccato ... Some of the loveliest writing in the novel belong to the short sections woven throughout that belong to Kai ... At times I found myself wondering what new themes, settings, different items on the menu so to speak, he might try next.
The novel is sparely narrated by these main characters in turn – Kai from beyond the grave – but all three are equally resentful, guilty and miserable. I did appreciate the story’s normalisation of racial, sexual and cultural variety, its celebration of friendship and some barbed comments about gentrification in Houston ... For the most part, though, Family Meal feels like a wan echo of Washington’s debut, with its dead parents, mixed east Asian and Black heritage and diverse minor characters, the motif of food as an emotional expression, and its unconventional domestic setups and constant touchiness ... A low-energy love triangle ... Serves up too little for too long.
Though written in his characteristic minor key, Family Meal continues this confidence and conviction. We find the same formal tendencies (moving between characters’ perspectives) and thematic interests (food, interracial relationships and the ramifying effects of grief) as in his debut ... Writing sex is a notoriously fraught business. Washington, however, excels here ... Washington shows great versatility in ventriloquising TJ and Kai’s different tones and sensibilities ... Other aspects of the novel gave me pause for thought. My current bugbear is novels where some chapters are, for no good reason, just a sentence or paragraph long. Washington sometimes adopts this technique, and fluency rather than fragmentation would have helped to sustain emotional intensity in places. Equally baffling was the inclusion of photographs of Japan, after Kai spends time in Osaka for a translation project ... But perhaps my biggest issue was the later trend towards mawkishness. Washington admirably works to show that his characters might not be irreparably marred by their previous trauma, but the dialogue and tone towards the novel’s end becomes notably platitudinous in feel.
Washington apportions intimacy and isolation, exchange and silence, and he draws readers into delicate moments of recognition. As pages turn, a series of connections and disconnections are pressed between them, into an organic network of relationships ... His storytelling exudes such confidence, that readers imagine that tomato dramatically arcing, humming the whole length of the table, and landing between his teeth—denting the flesh, tenderly and intentionally.
Moving ... In sparse but affecting prose (some chapters are single sentences, and it’s worth noting that there are no quotations marks), Washington explores self-destruction and self-discovery, queer love, what it means to heal and the power of personal connection ... A tender and vulnerable meditation on the ways our loved ones change us, and how we change them in return.
A distinctive writer ... His work is contemporary without feeling explicitly modern ... Like all good food writing, there is a vicarious sensual pleasure in Washington’s work. If Cam buys flowers for his boyfriend purely for their beauty, it might follow that Washington is a proponent of gratifying prose, purely for enjoyment’s sake ... In an otherwise tender and accomplished text, Family Meal is let down only by the third section of the book. It feels like the author diverted the course of the narrative to give us a too-tidy ending.
Although it jumps about in time and place, the novel is actually small and intimate in scope, focused on a tiny group of connected lives ... There are a great many emotions, betrayals and conversations along the way, and they are related by the author with a light, deft touch ... The images of blossoms and foliage that accompany Kai’s monologues likewise add little significant. Rather, they come across as attempts to give poignancy to emotions that don’t need extra help. Washington is at his best when he keeps feelings unspoken ... Fortunately, such sentimental moments are few ... Bryan Washington speaks for people who have too long been silenced, and the voice he has found for them is defiant, compassionate, decent and profoundly human. This whiteguy, at least, was impressed.
Washington makes the subtle and sly choice to tell a story of loss and displacement using multiple voices that form a kind of Greek chorus. The result is a great triumph ... Washington delivers much more ... Bryan Washington has given us a powerful narrative of a generation searching for a safe place to be—and for some wiggle room to grow.
Shifting between points of view, Washington shows us characters at their most vulnerable, using food culture to explore conflict, desire, pleasure and passion. The meals his characters enjoy together through it all—from congee to collards to croissants—remind us of the many ways that love, like food, sustains us.
Intimate ... Washington luxuriates in descriptions of smells, tastes, and textures without letting the narrative get bogged down ... Washington brilliantly commits to his style and preoccupations in a novel about the often winding journey to family.
