“Tender and poignant, Washington’s latest hits the spot.” – PEOPLE Magazine
From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot , an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss.
Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time?
When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.

Washington, Bryan

Penguin Random House Distribution

Random House, Incorporated

Penguin Random House LLC

Riverhead Books

Penguin Random House LLC, New York, 2023

United States, United States of America

'Achingly and beautifully etched... Washington is a generous and gentle writer, with a profound capacity to face the cruelty and pain of contemporary American life while simultaneously offering his characters—and readers—an expansive space for self-forgiveness, hope, and nourishment.'—The Washington PostThe ghost of Kai, the love of Cam's life, won't leave Cam alone. He follows Cam from LA back home to Houston, his visits wild, tender, and unpredictable. But Cam has changed, and when he reenters the orbit of his childhood best friend TJ and his family's bakery, neither Cam nor TJ is sure how to navigate their charged estrangement. Searching for a way past all the wounds and secrets—a way to be okay together, maybe for the first time— the pair find hope and sustenance from the most unlikely source. From the bestselling, award-winning author Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about how those know us longest—even when they hurt us most—can also set the benchmark for love.

"Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, unexpected, and explosive. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other?"-- Provided by publisher

2023-10-17