Weekend Read #013 - MEMORIAL by Bryan Washington
A fresh and innovative family drama, perfect for ambitious actors (and award-seekers 👀)
Hello again!
Welcome back to the Weekend Read! If you’re new here, this is where we highlight available IP that has been overlooked by Hollywood buyers, or talk about books that producers should be reading because they’re relevant to the current zeitgeist.
“It’s hard to head home without succumbing to nostalgia, standing where so many versions of yourself once stood.”
I read this title around the time it came out - I think it was my Book of the Month Club pick sometime in the winter of 2020 or 2021. I wonder if they made it a Holiday selection for a reason - no matter what kind of sticky situation you ended up in with your family over Christmas or New Years’, it ABSOLUTELY wasn’t as complicated as the situation these characters got themselves into.
Here is the official synopsis:
Benson 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.
But 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. 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. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.
Both 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. Memorial 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.
Bryan Washington - recipient of many prestigious literary awards - published MEMORIAL from Riverhead Books in 2020 after the critically acclaimed LOT hit the shelves in 2019. He’s since published FAMILY MEAL in 2023, and has his fourth novel, PALAVER, set to publish in November of this year. MEMORIAL is available - at least according to the tracking board information I have, but I’ll need to double check to see if there are any creative attachments. (I couldn’t get anyone to pick up the phone for me this week, but DM me if you’re interested and I can point you in the right direction!)
“I still hadn’t learned that there is a finite number of people who will ever be interested in you.”
There’s a lot to love in MEMORIAL - there’s obviously the morally grey and unpredictable characters, but there’s also the in depth analysis of their career fields, a passionate love of food, and a fascinating attention to detail in each city the plot takes us to. I’d almost want to call it a globe-trotting story, but at the same time each place we find ourselves in feels like we can never leave.
A screen adaptation could be a lot of things - it could be a PACHINKO style epic following the very wide set branches of this family, it could be a smaller-scale crucible like THE BEAR, or it could be the perfect movie vehicle for an actor (two actors!) to ride towards an Oscar.
I really do think MEMORIAL would do well in this market. I think it takes the classic family drama and supercharges it with topics that haven’t been discussed in the mainstream before. It’s a familiar premise taken to new heights.
“That loving a person means letting them change when they need to. And letting them go when they need to. And that doesn’t make them any less of a home. Just maybe not one for you. Or only for a season or two. But that doesn’t diminish the love. It just changes forms.”
Thanks for reading!
TIP