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rebeccagratson 's review for:
Lot
by Bryan Washington
Lot is a collection of vignettes detailing the life in and around Houston’s immigrant neighborhoods. Many of the characters are young queer men of color flitting from one rough street to the next, in and out different beds, unconnected yet seemingly stuck in place. Even as the stories weave through various cultures and backgrounds, much of the sentiment remains the same. Struggles with identity and acceptance and stigma. The crushing weight of poverty and gentrification and the endless cycle of trying to get ahead. Familial bonds that are complicated at best, and devastating at their worst. The prose was blunt yet poetic, managing to flow in descriptive beauty while keeping the stories to their barest bones. Much of Lot’s emotional weight falls between the lines of brief dialogue, relying on the gritty, unescapable scenery of Houston’s back alleys to carry the punch. Save for the main character whose story we follow throughout, I failed to see a lot of connections between the chapters, which was disappointing and made the novel feel disjointed and random. And despite the amount of characters introduced, the majority of their stories fell into the same predictable rhythms. Ultimately, I wanted to enjoy Lot a lot more than I ended up doing.