Reading, Writing, and Me

Memorial  by Bryan Washington Overview:  Ben and Mike are in a long term relationship that's on shaky footing. It's stuck in a void between staying in the comfortable status quo and admitting that the cracks are becoming harder to ignore. And then Mike finds out his dad is dying of cancer in Japan. He books a plane ticket to Osaka to mend fences with his estranged father just has his mother is flying into Houston for a visit from Tokyo. Despite this, Mike still leaves which sends Ben and Mike's mother into an awkward crash course on being roommates. Dealing in grief of many kinds and the plasticity of our relationships, Memorial  has wit and heart as well as deep thought. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 As with any literary fiction novel, it's the characters that make a book worth reading. Here, Ben steals the show. His sections of the book are the most fully realized in voice and dimension. We learn about Ben's family life, his feelings around his HIV diagnosis, the joy h