Server

by Bryan Washington

In Bryan Washington’s novella, “Server,” the narrator finds himself living in two worlds—one where he is an English teacher in Japan, and the other, where he plays a video game with his best friend, who is dead.

Genres: Japan, Novella

Unknown Binding

Published August 9, 2023

About the author

Bryan Washington is an American writer. He published his debut short story collection, Lot, in 2019 and a novel, Memorial, in 2020.

Reviews

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Washington's work is always so intimate, so affecting, and so personal that I can practically smell the food his characters cook and hear their nightclub music ringing in my ears. We follow a Black american english teacher at a Japanese school for "at-risk" youth, who is unmoored both in his relationships with his challenging students, his long-term boyfriend, and the dead friend bizarrely resurrected on a dying video game server.

These narratives are effortlessly and complexly entangled in a way that allows us to anticipate the ending(s) without losing interest: Washington's pacing is careful and controlled. Observation, journeying, and intimacy for its own sake take the lead –– the ultimate "climax" and "resolution" are a secondary concern to relationships of person, place, and spacetime. It's a great homage to the literary tradition of the region where the story takes place, without compromising a vital critique of Japanese racial, class, and gender-sexual norms that cause immense harm (and their u.s. analogues). This novella is gorgeous, interesting, and meant to be savored, as is the case with everything in Washington's oeuvre.

[b b · Rating 5 out of 5]

a GEM