Family Meal

Family Meal is a novel about queer friendship, loss, finding family, and food, as two childhood friends learn to be around each other as adults. Cam is struggling after the death of his boyfriend, Kai, and is back in his hometown, losing himself in sex and drugs. Meanwhile, TJ, Cam's childhood best friend whose parents took Cam in, knows Cam is back in town, but they circle one enough, wary after a sense of betrayal. As Cam sees Kai as he goes about his life and TJ looks for what he wants in his future, the two must find their friendship again in a new way.

This is a powerful book, filled with emotions, as well as exploring things like disordered eating and drug abuse. At its heart, it is about family and friendship and the need to find the right people around you, which isn't just one person, but a whole load of people. It is told from multiple perspectives, mostly Cam's for the start and TJ's later on, and this allows the book to explore intimacy in various ways and show the complexity of relationships. Possibly unusually for this kind of book, which isn't so much focused on a narrative but on characters, the ending did feel like a turning point and a good way to end it. There's some really compelling side characters as well, that help to show the idea of found family and that human relationships are not simple.

Family Meal is a strange book to describe, with a surprisingly low-key ghost element and a plot that is really centred around friendship and doing things for other people, and a lot of food throughout. Perhaps most notably for me, it leaves you with a sense that not everything has to be fixed by putting it back together the same way.

NO SPOILERS
If you loved Bryan Washington’s Memorial, as I did, you will love Family Meal. If you haven’t read either then do it now!

Family Meal is a brutal but beautifully written sympathetic, astute portrayal of the grief Cam feels at losing his parents and Kai, and the grief his friends and family feel at losing him as he was. And the grief we all experience at losing the status quo.

Washington’s writing, though complex and skilled, is effortless to read and set out in such a way that gives natural pauses for thought. Aspects of this book will stay with me for a long time.

Love Bryan Washington's writing and his latest novel doesn't disappoint. A novel about grief, sex, food, finding family, chosen and otherwise, connecting, eating, weather, flowers and a strong sense of place - Houston. The author's style of fiction is a languid as his characters, who say little but connect in a beautiful ballet of food preparation, eating and physical touch. I loved the way that Cam and TJ are with each other, it is moving and robustly delicate. The author shows us how communities and families are formed through the lives of interesting characters that is so enjoyable. Fabulous writing.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Family Meal is about three men, Cam, TJ, and Kai, but only two of them can share their life stories because the third one is dead. And still, Kai is present in every move, on every page, in every sentence, and eventually tells his story too.

Bryan Washington wrote a raw book about grief, love, and (found) family. About finding a home. About the responsibility to take care of each other. About just trying to be, if life’s too tough. And of course about food.

After losing the love of his life, Cam doesn’t want to feel pain, so he dives into unprotected sex, drugs, not eating, and messing up others. Slowly he’s destroying himself.

I had to adjust myself in the first pages because Bryan wrote this book without quotation marks in the dialogues, and I actually hate books without them. I need punctuation for the overview and insight into the story, and I get lost without them. But I must admit that it fitted Family Meal, and it made this story even better—the rawness more grittier, the grief more sadder, the food more tasteful.

When I started reading, a knot knitted itself in my stomach and grew bigger and bigger, reaching my lungs so I almost couldn’t breathe anymore, scratching my heart until it was scarred so badly that it went from sore to unbearably painful. Not only because of Cam’s self-destruction but also because of how Kai died and because of TJ, who seemed steady as a rock but had his own sh*t to deal with.

Family Meal is not for the faint of heart. There’s lots of sex (not that graphic, though), lots of drug use, and lots of cheating. But there’s so much love too. Cam’s memory of that last day with Kai when he bought his boyfriend flowers—sunflowers because Kai loved them so much—was so sweet that my eyes clouded with tears. The moment TJ found Cam at the bayou in the rain made my heart hopeful. And at the end, I had to put my e-reader away several times because otherwise, I’d have sobbed uncontrollably. Not because the ending was sad but because of the beautiful love that shone through all the darkness from before. There’s a guy on the back porch holding a cat. And he’s just trying to be.

What a treat! I'm a big admirer of Bryan Washington's work in general. It's profoundly moving in a positive manner. The book is all about sorrow, love, and the concept of families formed through connections beyond blood relations. In the tale, cooking acts as the glue that unites these families. At its core, the novel follows a man's journey to recover from overwhelming sadness after his partner's tragic passing. Go read it!

I loved this book. Told from multiple viewpoints, it is a book about dysfunction and love, friendship and family, all of which are entwined and interchangeable here. It's poetic and beautiful, raw and real and I didn't want it to finish. I can't really put into words how affecting I found it. I'd already read Memorial and loved it, but I think this is better in every way. It's tighter and sparer but misses nothing. It made me think of Ocean Vuong's poetry as I read it.

This week I was accompanied by Bryan Washingtons new words at 2/3/4am and it made it all a little easier. I have been talking to a lot of friends recently about what constitutes too much trauma in a novel, what feels voyueristic or sadistic or unethical on part of the author. Washington’s newest novel, similar to his previous, deals with complicated queer relationships, grief and trauma for sure. It’s full of difficult life experiences but
what so clearly marks the difference, is the care and softness he treats his characters(and therfore his readers),with.

What a joy it is to feel safe in an authors story, to feel held in the midst of unfair unjust and difficult human experience, to feel supported even when those words touch your most tender parts.