Referred to as \u201cthe mother\u201d and \u201cthe son,\u201d these two people\u2014like characters in Family Meal (2023) and Memorial (2020)\u2014are equipped with the psychological tools needed to repair a wounded relationship but are almost entirely uncertain how to employ them. Truculent and alcoholic, he\u2019s an English tutor in Tokyo but lately he\u2019s been “forgetting his words.” He\u2019d moved to Japan a decade earlier partly, it seems, to escape his family in Texas, while his brother, Chris, who\u2019d joined the Army, is now in prison. The son agonizes over his fractured relationship with his brother, another element in his perception that something is missing or incomplete in him. The son is sleeping with a man, Taku, who\u2019s married to a woman; he\u2019s seeking \u201cclarity\u201d from Taku about their relationship status. The mother and son hadn\u2019t spoken in a number of years until he calls her one night but is unable to say much; the words he seems to want to say just do not emerge from his mouth, a physical manifestation of his emotionally stunted status. Suddenly, the mother takes two weeks off from her dental-office job in Houston, arrives in Tokyo, and promptly gets lost. It\u2019s remarkable how delicately and finely Washington metes out the emotional journeys for both mother and son. The novel begins with the son\u2019s embittered fury at his mother\u2019s passivity and emotional distance, which becomes a begrudging d\u00e9tente, and then an eventual kindness toward her. She proves to be an adept and patient woman who finds her own way in a dizzying city, making acquaintances until her son lets her into his life. She seeks forgiveness for her past harshness, which her son initially refuses to grant. Washington imbues both mother and son with humane backstories, including the mother\u2019s less-than-easy upbringing in Jamaica. He\u2019s skillful at conveying the ways in which small, even tiny acts of kindness can heal: Returning home to his apartment late one night, the son notices the TV still on and his mother\u2019s soft snoring, and he \u201cslowly wedge[s] a pillow under the back of her neck.\u201d In a less minutely observed novel, that would be an unremarkable moment, but it\u2019s deeply affecting given the fine emotional calibration Washington employs.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Referred to as \u201cthe mother\u201d and \u201cthe son,\u201d these two people\u2014like characters in Family Meal (2023) and Memorial (2020)\u2014are equipped with the psychological tools needed to repair a wounded relationship but are almost entirely uncertain how to employ them. Truculent and alcoholic, he\u2019s an English tutor in Tokyo but lately he\u2019s been “forgetting his words.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}