Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - Memorial

I LOVED this book. There are definitely some content warnings required (which I’ll put down below), but overall I loved Memorial deeply.

The Japanese food made throughout the story was a real comfort to me ✨ I also adored how Benito and Mitsuko started to cook together as their relationship progressed 🥰

What really made me fall in love with this book though was probably everyone’s ‘humanness’. Everyone had their flaws, everyone sometimes skirted around their flaws, everyone felt their flaws, etc. It was an insight into everyday human life and how we could push away the people we love, whether intentional or not. I felt Benito try to numb his flaws through conversations about work and about Ximena, whereas I felt Mike try to numb his flaws through escapism (going to see Eiju or Tan).

There was no ‘happy ending’ per se, but I was surprised at how okay I was with this. I really appreciated Benito and Mike’s okayness at the end, even with Omar and Tan in the picture 🥲

All in all, a fantastic book. I can’t wait to recommend it to more people 🏳️‍🌈

Content Warnings

readingwithcoffee's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

One hand I thought the fact this cast is basically entirely people of color (and at least all the characters of note are not white) and their problems don’t stem from racism was very refreshing. However the emotional repression and emotionally stunt aspects of the characters and just how miserable they are (though the writing is very good) both made the book very refreshing in some aspects while frustrating in others.

Also one hand the two men the book is in the perspective of grew up in hostile environments and the main cast is their families so it could just be what they would find normalized but it was difficult to tell of the novel took domestic violence seriously especially violence involving throwing things?

Content Warnings

kirani's review against another edition

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emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

hmbk's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

abbyjb's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Honestly what a great read! The story is told in two different perspectives: Mike and Benson. The time Mike spends in Osaka away from Benson changes him and his perspective about his father. Benson gets to live without Mike but with Mike's mother, and gets to learn about himself and becomes more honest with his feelings.

Content Warnings

kaii's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

this book made me sob on not one, but two, german trains

Content Warnings

thewordsdevourer's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

memorial is an original, funny, and bittersweet book abt family, love and pain, whose second section sees washington achieve a rare feat of a western author writing like a japanese one - in that particular 'vignettes of life's small yet huge moments' way.

the characters are deeply - some surprisingly - flawed and layered; there's no 'good' ppl here bc everyone's fcked up in one way or another. im a lil amazed at how washington handles the characterization and adeptly shows how everyone's been on both sides of being hurt and doing the hurting.

in addition to being quite funny - mike's and ben's parents are bemusingly acerbic and surprising - this book's also got a lot of heart, esp in regards to its theme of family, w/ mike and eiju's complex relationship being a particularly heartrending one. a sense of melancholy and bittersweetness permeates throughout the aforementioned second section, evoking the slice-of-life quality often found in jpn lit. i view this as a great accomplishment as it's sth so rarely achieved in western lit, let alone by a man from texas. the importance and prevalent presence of food in the story is also sth i rly like, calming while acting as a bridge between the characters, while also displaying washington's deep knowledge of jpn culinary culture.

i enjoy this book for its acerbic humor, messy characters, melancholic tone, and the exploration of its themes, particularly that in this life, everyone - even ur seemingly perfect parents - is just winging it.

Content Warnings

emmehooks's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I was not a fan of this book until I realized it’s more about the journey then the outcome. The reader is supposed to create emotional subtext and themes in the blank space Washington leaves. A wonderful narrative that uses 2 perspectives, a lot of memories, and the present thought to evoke empathy, thoughts of subtle change, and what it means to build a life that’s okay, but not easy or perfect.

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