Just when Benson and Mike consider their relationship has
run its course, but are afraid to call it quits (for the reasons that keep
couples together), two significant things happen to Mike.
His mother, Mitsuko, arrives from Japan for a visit while
his estranged father lays dying in Osaka (Mike is Japanese-American). Mike flees
his life in Houston, Texas, leaving Ben with Mitsuko. Something big has already
happened to Ben, before he met Mike, which we discover halfway through the
story – something he has learned to accommodate but not entirely.
The first part of Memorial is narrated by Ben and
deals with his experiences at work, with his friends and family, and his new
unlikely flatmate, the dour and laconic mother-in-law. Ben adjusts to living
without Mike in their apartment but can he move on without Mike in his life?
The second part of the novel is from Mike’s point of view in
Japan. Whereas Ben’s paragraphs are bite-size and brittle (his voice is caustic
at times), Mike’s are longer, more elliptical. It is through Mike we learn the
story of their coming together and their falling apart.
As his father’s health deteriorates, Mike must take charge
of the restaurant he runs – ironically, poignantly, the restaurant is named
after his former wife. Mike negotiates new relationships with customers and
staff and, like Ben, is offered the chance of new love. But he faces his
lover’s dilemma: what does he want?
In the third section, Mike returns to Texas and both men
have to make decisions – or do they?
Memorial is about the impossibilities of love as well
as its opportunities. The novel challenges the foundations on which we
construct our adult lives (including how we re-cast our parents). It poses the
question: what is home? Mike writes:
‘I used to wonder what Ma meant when I asked her about
Japan, because I could only remember so much of that shit from when I was
younger, and she’d tell me it was different from home, but also the same. It
was her home, not mine. But it was still home. Whatever that means.’
He also suggests that ‘You shouldn’t make a home out of
other people’; people change, but ‘you’re stuck in whatever your idea of home
was.’ He says this to his new lover, who doesn’t think it’s a problem. ‘We’ll
all have plenty of homes in this life. It’s when you don’t that there’s an
issue. That’s settling.’ Another acquaintance challenges Mike’s right to claim
Japan as home: ‘But you’re not from here. You get to leave.’
For all his bluster, Ben is equally flummoxed. He tries to
pin their projected break-up on Mike but Mitsuko is having none of it.
‘So Mike’s going home, I say and Mitsuko looks my way.
You could also say he’s leaving it, she says.’
Words trip over each other in quickfire banter. The novel
brilliantly shows how language gets in the way of how we act and feel. Parents
and children tiptoe round each other, wary of causing offence and intruding but
equally wanting to make their bedrock beliefs crystal clear.
The novel is full of truisms, line after line, but in
Washington’s hands they are never trite but malleable. Early in the book, Mike
says, ‘Just because something isn’t working doesn’t mean it’s broken. You just
have to want to fix it.’ Easy, right? Can you fault the logic of ‘We take our
memories wherever we go, and what’s left are the ones that stick around, and
that’s how we make a life’? Other arguments include: is good enough good
enough? What about the policy that if something happens we deal with it? Words
can be both weapons and shields.
Sometimes, you forget how people are, Mike suggests. And
then they remind you. But there are some things you can never forget. Ben, an
African-American, is all too aware of hard-line and casual racism. Both men
acutely sensitive to homophobia. This is America in 2021 – this is life.
Memorial is sometimes tragic, often very funny,
always true. A vital novel, which I’m so glad I’ve read and happily recommend.
------
Memorial is published by Atlantic Books.
Jon is a regular reviewer here. Read more of his choices:
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
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