For author Bryan Washington, a meal can be anything. It can be an apology, a reunion, an opportunity to express your bones-deep irritation with someone you love. In his latest novel Family Meal, out October 10 via Riverhead Books, Washington explores the ways in which food and comfort — and denying ourselves the pleasures of both — are intimately connected.
Set in Los Angeles, Osaka, and Houston, Family Meal tells the story of Cam, a Houston bartender who’s working through overwhelming grief, and TJ, the childhood friend with whom Cam has a deeply complicated relationship. Cam’s life has been marked by a series of tragedies, including the horrific loss of his partner Kai, who was killed shortly before he moved back to his hometown. As he works in a bar in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, the epicenter of the city’s queer nightlife scene, Cam smothers his grief with pills and anonymous hook-ups while he tries to repair his friendship with TJ, which has been damaged by years of distance and unspoken apologies.
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