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Meet Benson and Mike. In Benson's own words:

It's like we're in some fucked-up rom-com, I said. It's like we're both fucked up rom-com villains.

These are two flawed men shaped by many things but most especially their families. The story is told entirely in reported speech. There are no quotation marks to showcase dialogs. The vignettes are brief and don't give you any chance to percolate before you're bombarded with the next memory, fight, moment, feeling.

This book questions a lot about life. It's a slice of life story with no plot to speak of just following the messed up love lives of Benson and Mike.

As a budding existentialist, this book left me with a lot to think about.

On existence... Are we other people thinking of us?

You’re taking up space in another human’s brain, she said. You’re a foreign entity. A parasite. That’s a lot by itself.


Wait until you’re our age, she said. See who’s still around.

On living...

what if it doesn’t work out? I asked. What if you don’t know? Nobody ever knows if it’ll work, said Ximena. That’s why you do this shit. To find out.


we take our memories wherever we go, and what’s left are the ones that stick around, and that’s how we make a life.

On loving... Loving your person over many years

loving a person means letting them change when they need to. And letting them go when they need to. And that doesn’t make them any less of a home. Just maybe not one for you. Or only for a season or two. But that doesn’t diminish the love. It just changes forms.

The writing is lyrical and beautiful. Few words are chosen but they pack a punch. This is the kind of book that stays with you. That makes you turn it over again and again asking yourself if you missed something. It also assumes its reader is really smart. Unfortunately for it, my attention deficiency isn't designed to inhale a book continuously until an unspoken interlude. I had to constantly reread chapters because I had missed something or had overlooked something (I had). The book is also a bit interactive, a fictional memoir that also has photographic evidence of where our characters are.

Mike is Japanese and Benson is black. Their stories are immersive, evocative, authentic. I learnt so much about Japan that I realised how little I actually knew about Japan. Washington successfully created a tapestry of life that simultaneously made me a voyeur and a participant. I was there when Benson was cooking with Mike's mother. I was there when Mike was fighting with Eiku. I was there when our MCs were reliving moments from their pasts that were pivotal to who they were as adults.

However, the book promptly let go of my hand when it approached the ending. I'm still not sure what I think happened is what actually happened. Does that mean I will read this book again? But, of course.

EXTRAS

But this is life too, said the guy, smiling.
Yeah?
Yeah. It’s different. But it’s still happening.

If you'd like a taste of Bryan's work, here is a . It has Bryan's aversion to quotation marks and affinity for food.