As I read Bryan Washington’s Family Meal, a quote from Toni Morrison kept coming to mind. Just after receiving the Nobel prize for literature, reflecting on her career, Morrison said: “I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central. I claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.”
Washington’s writing – the short story collection Lot, and an uncannily affecting debut novel, Memorial – achieves a similar effect. His eye is trained on the compromises, victories and ingenuity of Black, brown and queer characters and communities, but he never emphasises their supposed marginality. Nor, importantly, does he play the anthropologist: he doesn’t explain the specificities of the queer or Black lives he follows as if they are beyond the ken of straight and/or white readers.
Though written in his characteristic minor key, Family Meal continues this confidence and conviction. We find the same formal tendencies (moving between characters’ perspectives) and thematic interests (food, interracial relationships and the ramifying effects of grief) as in his debut. The novel is concerned with the emotional development of three twentysomething queer men: Cam, TJ and Kai. Cam and TJ are estranged best friends who grew up together in Texas. As teenagers, they inhabited their “own universe’’; when the novel begins, they’ve not seen each other for years. Kai is Cam’s former boyfriend, whom Cam met after moving to LA.
Cam’s voice is the first we encounter, and we quickly establish that it has only two modes: rebarbative or enigmatically reticent. Having returned to his home town of Houston after Kai’s death – the tragic and deeply politicised circumstances of which Washington’s structure expertly withholds – Cam is adrift. He’s morosely working at a queer bar in the rapidly gentrifying Montrose “gaybourhood”, living in his boss’s cramped spare room and filling his days “boning everything in sight”.
Writing sex is a notoriously fraught business. Washington, however, excels here. The recounting of Cam’s messy sexploits as he dives into a world of polyamory, spandex harnesses, bathhouses and Grindr hookups is done with economy, wit and insight. Flashback descriptions of sex between Cam and Kai are by turns headily charged, convincingly quotidian and fun: they enjoy a bit of mutual masturbation while their homemade cookies are baking in the oven. Later on in the narrative, Cam’s one-night stands have the delicious potential to “feel like a miracle … I’ll think of a man … lanky, chubby, tall, hairy, smooth, softer, sharper, bald, older, straight-ish, queeny … and all of a sudden he’s there.”
These casual rendezvous can elevate Cam out of his ennui. And while he is metaphorically haunted by Kai’s ghost, they realign him with the corporeal, too – with liveliness and the flesh-and-blood stuff of living. But, as the title suggests, this is a novel interested in feeding and nourishment, and there’s often a troubling hunger in Cam’s need for sexual connection. He has a bleaker desire for the “night [to] swallow [him] whole because it’s something to fucking do”. This desire is concomitant with a self-loathing manifested in Cam’s asperity and detachment from those around him. TJ’s surprise arrival at the bar one night, and his attempts at reconciliation with his old friend, shake up Cam’s ways of being.
Subsequent shifts in perspective – first to Kai, then to TJ – fill the gaps in Cam’s backstory. Sections narrated by TJ also mine the depths of the history between him and Cam, one of broken confidences and ambiguous affections. Washington shows great versatility in ventriloquising TJ and Kai’s different tones and sensibilities. Translator Kai is figured as an expressive and curious quester. TJ, who works in his family’s bakery, is presented as sharing some of Cam’s surface sass that belies a deep-seated vulnerability. This marked parity beautifully draws attention to the fraternity that exists between these two characters, regardless of the conflicts that threaten their closeness. It must be said, however, that Cam’s edgier, more hard-bitten worldview and his crackling sense of humour make him a far more intriguing character than the other two. As Kai himself admits begrudgingly, Cam’s “bluntness feels like oxygen”.
Other aspects of the novel gave me pause for thought. My current bugbear is novels where some chapters are, for no good reason, just a sentence or paragraph long. Washington sometimes adopts this technique, and fluency rather than fragmentation would have helped to sustain emotional intensity in places. Equally baffling was the inclusion of photographs of Japan, after Kai spends time in Osaka for a translation project.
But perhaps my biggest issue was the later trend towards mawkishness. Washington admirably works to show that his characters might not be irreparably marred by their previous trauma, but the dialogue and tone towards the novel’s end becomes notably platitudinous in feel. Characters about to embark on new relationships boldly vow that they’ll “do the work” and “figure things out together”. Arguably, after all the emotional upheavals, redemptive resolution – of sorts – is worthy and hard won. But I wished Washington had maintained his otherwise fine balance of sweetness and sourness until the very last morsel was eaten.
• Family Meal by Bryan Washington is published by Atlantic (£17.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
