Memorial

(Riverhead, $27)

The opening pages of this debut novel “may feel like the contrived start of a zany meet-the-parents mix-up,” said

Ron Charles in The Washington Post. A young black man in Houston finds himself sharing a one-bedroom apartment with the angry mother of his JapaneseAmerican boyfriend, who left for Japan to visit his dying estranged father just as she arrived. But Bryan Washington, the author of the acclaimed short-story collection Lot, doesn’t limit himself to comedy. In fact, “no other novel I’ve read this year captures so gracefully the full palette of America.” Ben and Mike, the separated central couple, take turns as narrators, which means readers are “trapped in the heads of these confused characters,” said Ryu Spaeth in The New York Times. They’re not even sure they should remain together. But bewilderment about how to move forward given myriad personal entanglements is the stuff of life. “In plain, confident prose, Washington deftly records the way the forces of loyalty pull the heartstrings in different directions.”