One of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year” “Phenomenal” –Justin Torres, author of We the Animals“Brilliant” –Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun“A profound exploration of the true meaning of borders.” —The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2019 in the New York Times by Dwight GarnerA New York Times Notable Book of 2019In the city of Houston – a … Dwight Garner
A New York Times Notable Book of 2019
In the city of Houston – a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America – the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows, resenting his older sister’s absence. And discovering he likes boys.
Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston’s myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra.
Bryan Washington’s brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, raw power, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.
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The kind of stories I am always longing to read. I love the urgency, honesty, and vitality of Washington’s voice. I love these characters for where they’re from, and where they’re going, what they know, and what they reveal about trouble and love.
A brilliant display of raw talent, with gut-punching stories that deliver with a lasting force. This is the literature that I’ve been waiting for.
What a book. This is a generous, powerful, deeply engrossing collection of stories that will crack open your heart then put it back together again. Lot is indelible, and Bryan Washington is an important new talent.
Bryan Washington gets Houston down on the page in a way I haven’t seen before; the city, in his hands, is revealed in all its strange and righteous glory, a fresh sense of youth that’s a pleasure to read. Bryan is a thrilling new voice in American fiction and one to watch.
Bryan Washington’s voice has risen blazingly from Houston and now commands us to pay attention. Lot is as raw, soulful and moving as a story collection can get. It’s my favorite fiction debut of the year.
Lot is the confession of a neighborhood, channeled through a literary prodigy. Bryan Washington doesn’t render a world, he actually captures one, grabs it out of reality and holds it up for you to see it sparkle. Unflinching, romantic while refusing to romanticize, this is the debut of a prodigious talent.
This book is a collection of stories about gay Black men who find themselves in various circumstances, most resulting in either tragic endings or ending that are surprising and sometimes difficult to figure out. All the characters are interesting in that their lives are set in locations and circumstances that are unknown to most White, middle class people. I enjoyed learning about people who are different than mine and look forward to other books by this author.
A unique voice, this writer is capable of producing some very special work. I’m going to follow him for sure. I loved his depiction of the Houston working and underclass worlds
Poorly written. As a former Houston-ite, I was excited about this book. But the writer is unskilled, and the stories were very uninspiring, and not all that interesting. DNF.
A book that is difficult to categorize — it is both a series of short stories but also a novel. The characters are both contemporary bur from an earlier time. Contemporary gay Latino literature at its most intriguing, giving a glimpse inside poverty, families, machismo, being undocumented, being gay, and survival.
I was excited to read this book as part of the Dylan Thomas Prize. Unfortunately i couldn’t engage whilst reading the book. I got to 30% in the book and decided to DNF. This book is not for me but that’s not to say it wasn’t wrote well and others will not enjoy it.
The author did a great job accessing the raw emotions, day-to-day routines, and livelihoods of people trying to make it. It was a little difficult to follow sometimes, but each chapter stands alone as its own short story. Even reading them independently of each other does not make you feel like you’ve missed out on important information from past stories/chapters.
This author’s writing is poetic as he describes a part of Huston society I’d never otherwise been exposed to. This is a powerful collection of deeply human interwoven short stories.
This is a work of genius. Brilliant, incisive, inventive prose. Taut atmosphere. Hard stories anchored in place. Heart-rending without a whiff of sentimentality. Combustible.