Point of View

Lot is a collection of loosely related short stories, half of which are narrated in first person by a young man named Nicolás, looking back on his childhood and young adult years, which he spent living in Houston with his family. Nicolás' perspective is defined by his identity as a gay, biracial man, and by his family's relatively low income status. He is largely motivated by familial concerns; after his sister Jan leaves the family when she gets married, and his brother Javi dies serving in the military, Nicolás feels he is responsible for looking after their mother. Because Nicolás's father left the family, Nicolás does not trust romantic relationships, and consequently only engages in brief sexual encounters with men, never allowing anything more serious to develop. At the end of the collection, after Nicolás' mother has left Houston...