When you pick up a Bryan Washington novel, it’s best to know what you’re getting into.

What you can expect right off the bat: graphic sex with acquaintances, partners and strangers (and then more of that); mouthwatering descriptions of amazing culinary concoctions on nearly every page; and a pretty on-point depiction of a neighborhood that’s deep in the throes of gentrification without its longtime inhabitants’ consent.

What you can also expect if you dig a little under the surface: moments of debilitating grief or destabilizing alienation, followed by scenes filled with such joy and celebration of life that it’s impossible not to ingest both realities in one swallow — because, yes, this is what it means to be alive.

Washington’s “Family Meal” — his sophomore novel — is all this plus a tornado of feelings, from guilt and fury to patience and empathy. It picks at the scabs of humanity’s failures with eyes wide open while simultaneously showing us how to be humble, how to be honest and how to love.

The book opens with Cam, who has returned home to Houston after his boyfriend Kai’s unexpected death in Los Angeles. Alongside escapades with various men (“delivery guys and lawyers and dry cleaners and architects”), Cam deals with his heartache by developing an eating disorder and doing too many drugs.

“The descent starts slowly, and then all at once. An extra upper in the morning. A few pills at the bar before work. A f— or four over the course of an afternoon — I’m still functioning, mostly, but there’s a haze,” Washington writes of Cam.

When the queer bar he’s working at gets bought out by developers, Cam — basically homeless after a stint in rehab — reluctantly accepts a gig at his childhood friend TJ’s family’s bakery.

At this point, the narrative, though dusted with melancholy from the get-go, downshifts into deeper emotional territory — first into Kai’s flashbacks from the grave, then into the rest of the story told mostly from TJ’s perspective.

It’s at this point that the real work — and impact — of the novel begins.

在这里,我们学习TJ和凸轮的complica的本质ted connection and why they became estranged after TJ’s Korean father died and TJ’s Black mom, Mae, took over the bakery. We find out the circumstances surrounding Kai’s death (it’s a doozy, and Washington’s choice to set the event as part of the book’s wallpaper rather than its focal point is a smart one). And we watch TJ backtrack on pining over Ian (who is engaged to a woman), then try on a relationship with a new employee at the bakery, all while trying to figure out his future.

For anyone who’s read Washington’s multiple-award-winning first novel, “Memorial,” you know he has a knack for measured storytelling that builds momentum and gradually fills in holes before culminating in a finale that washes over you like a giant torrent of meaning and consequences that leave you gasping for air (in a good way).

Washington’s other gift is creating viscerally vulnerable characters and allowing their refreshingly open conversations to flow, showing just how hard — but ultimately rewarding — facing difficult issues head-on can be. He takes on polyamory, dealing with a “poz” diagnosis, familial expectations, fears of disappointment, death and, of course, trust.

For example, here’s one character’s take on love: “Love can be a lot of things. Right? It’s pleasure, but it’s also washing the dishes and sorting medication and folding the laundry. It’s picking out what to eat for dinner three nights in a row, even if you don’t want to. And it’s knowing when to speak up, and when to stay quiet, and when, I think, to move on. But also when to fight for it.”

Ultimately, the power of “Family Meal” is that it shows us how to hold space for each other, through life’s highest highs and lowest lows.

As Washington so wisely writes: “Sometimes the best we can do is live for each other. It’s enough. Even if it seems like it isn’t.”

Alexis Burling is a freelance writer.