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If you're still having trouble, follow these steps to sign in. Add a library card to your account to borrow titles, place holds, and add titles to your wish list. Have a card? Add it now to start borrowing from the collection. Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. Or, describing a depression Like someone flew a plane into your soul. In this collection, JD gives us close-up focus on Yunior his alter ego , his ma, his pa, his doomed brother Rafa, and their many girlfriends; the area of investigation is male sexuality, sub-category heterosexual, sub-sub category, Dominican, sub-sub-sub category American-Dominican.
Well, it's not an autobiography. So many for so long? And yet she went to Harvard? If so, what does that say for the rest of us? Answer : not a lot. Jan 13, Carmen rated it did not like it Recommends it for: No One. Shelves: fiction , he-says , traditionally-published , published , will-put-you-off-men , dominican-author.
Women are just fucktoys. Men are not loyal, never will be loyal, and women shouldn't expect them to be. Men will cheat and fuck anything that moves until they die. Just the way it is. There's no such thing as a loyal husband or boyfriend.
Women have no personalities or character traits. Instead they are distinguished by their body parts, "the one with the small breasts," "the one with the wide hips," "the one with the gigantic ass. The world is pain. Everything is terrible. Ther 1. There is no good in the world, it's a never-ending cesspool of misery. I speak Spanish, so I was fine, but if you don't understand Spanish I can see getting very annoyed with this book.
He flips back and forth from Spanish to English all the time. I didn't feel sad, I didn't really connect to any of the characters. If you could even claim this book has a storyline or plot, which I find doubtful. Tl;dr — Plotless, misogynistic garbage with a dismal worldview.
View all 25 comments. Sep 28, Kellie Lambert rated it liked it. Released September 11, I heard a a lot of hype for this book by Junot Diaz. I wanted to see--what is all the fuss about? Why did this jump to the top of the NY Bestseller List? I think I can tell you. In my best bookish librarian voice: the writing is raw.
It shifts between several different love stories, some unrequited, some failed I felt as if the narrator was sitting with me on the stoop of some NY slum, telling me about this girlfriend.
Or this story that just happened last week at schoolor how their heart is broken. The narrators confide in you, shock you, and involve you in each of their stories. It's a close-up look at Dominican life in New York, and some of the stories were heart-wrenching.
The relationships, poverty, the racism--but it didn't address these topics in a high school-history class kinda way. Was this the best book I've read this year? Was it fantastic writing, choice prose? Could I recommend it to everyone? Sexual content and language make this a very gritty story--I found it to be compelling and eye-opening, but it's not for your conservative book club. I looked up a review when I finished because I was a bit puzzled as to what my take-away was love is depressing?
Take a peek at it if you want some crafty, real writing that makes you say, How did Diaz make me feel like I was in the room with him? Can I write characters that real? View all 4 comments. Mar 21, Karel rated it it was ok Shelves: srzbznz. I can praise this. I can even say that it shows you a more accurate representation of what love is than a hell lot of books out there. But I won't. Yunior, so funny and eloquent in Oscar Wao, is only amusing at best here.
From start to end, it's just an unemotional, cold, and distant narration of who he fucked and who he cheated on and what he did to win them back - only to lapse back into the habit like gamblers and alcoholics. There a. There might be something profound here, about life and loss and all the other rot, but I'm afraid the message was not received. I am not touched. I am not brooding. I do not feel different.
The one message that the book tried to hand me was completely redundant. Don't cheat, it says. It will fuck up your life.
No shit, Sherlock. Sep 11, Maria rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. Junot Diaz has always been a favorite author of mine, ever since college when he came to the Latin-American lit class I was taking in ' By that time, I had already read Drown and was on my way to reading Negocios, the Spanish translation of Drown, expertly done by my lit. Eduardo Lago even the colloquialisms and the SHUCO-ness , the grit, the sarcasm, the naughtiness, came through, which I know, as an amateur translator myself, is supremely tough to accomplish.
Diaz's language, Junot Diaz has always been a favorite author of mine, ever since college when he came to the Latin-American lit class I was taking in ' Diaz's language, dialogue, place, every ounce of passion and work he puts into his writing, it is all fresh, and so it will be when I reread This Is How You Lose Her next year, and the next, and so on.
It takes a very talented writer to give his readers a different glimpse of the same character, Yunior, who pops up everywhere, starting with Drown. Every time he shows up, a layer of Yunior is peeled back. He's an onion - everytime you peel back a layer, you feel like crying a little.
Notice here that Yunior's girls - his sucias - and his friends revolve around him, but the family stays the same, close to him, living in the back of his head - dando consejos giving advice , for better or for worse, and sometimes ruling him. The mark of a great author is the characters he crafts, and Diaz is a writer who blows the best of them out of the water on that count. Diaz has an amazing ability to evoke emotion like few others can - you pull for Yunior and his boys.
You pray for Rafa yet, like Mami, are almost constantly disgusted with him at the same time - so you say your prayer for him then hold up your hand like you are going to smack him silly.
You want to hug Yunior's girls, tell them you've been there, hold their hands, tell them that even the smartest women can be easily fooled by a charming man. And Papi, it's like Yunior said in Fiesta, a story in Drown - you just look at his belly button because you're afraid of looking him in the eye.
You know you could never live the way some of those characters live or in the places they live, yet people stronger than you do that every day. When you have hope and faith, so do they. There is a common thread that you don't know about or even willfully ignore until you read Diaz's work. Dios mio. You want to hug him. You see through the exterior and you want to tell him it's all OK.
You want to yell at him and knock some sense into him. Yet you empathize with him. You throw up your hands because you wish he'd just come clean. And you want to be there when he does. And then the sadness when the book ends, even though you know you'll see it again, is palpable. The ripped-out pages I saved in a portfolio just in case I never saw those stories published again. But even though those magazine pages, for the most part, contain the same words as the corresponding stories in the book, it's like the stories were brand new.
Again, blows everyone away on sheer ability. And Diaz, you want to tell him, "You did good, hombre. You did real good. Mar 30, Jessica Jeffers rated it it was amazing Shelves: fiction , stories-essays , authors-of-color. Holy cannoli on a flying Popsicle stick. I never got around to reading Oscar Wao mostly because I never got around to it and a little because I was concerned that I simply wouldn't be able to relate to a story about a nerdy teenage boy living in what Diaz himself describes as the ghetto.
But, I heard that it was good you know, in that Pulitzer-winning way and then there was increased buzz around this latest collection of short stories. Somehow, I was the first person on the library reserve lis Holy cannoli on a flying Popsicle stick. Somehow, I was the first person on the library reserve list.
I can't believe I'd ever hesitate on something like this - I flipping tore through this thing like my life depended on it. I didn't even notice that I accidentally doubled the length of my lunch break because of it. A series of short stories centered on the theme of lost love, This is How You Lose Her packs an enormous punch. Many stories involve Yunior, who also appeared in Diaz's previous works, but some focus on new characters as well.
Those latter stories falter a little bit for me, but that's mostly because Yunior's felt so much like Diaz opening his veins and pouring his blood out onto the pages. The story featuring the titular line is four pages long and features no real action, but it was chilling in its emotion. I couldn't shake the fact that it was simply the author expressing his regret over a relationship he fucked up once upon a time.
So much regret in these pages, and so much heart. Some of the characters lack the self-awareness I'd love to see, but I suppose that drives home the authenticity of the narrative. After all, who's really self-aware when they're struggling to hold together a failing relationship? Regardless of the severity, loss and heartbreak are, sadly, two of the world's few truly universal experiences. Junot Diaz absolutely nails it. Maybe it speaks to where I am in my life at the moment, but I am baffled at the idea that anyone can read this book and not feel something.
This collection gets my most enthusiastic recommendation. Jan 08, Roy Lotz rated it liked it Shelves: novels-novellas-short-stories , americana. I felt as though he was constantly trying to maintain my attention, with a punchline, a striking image, a vulgarity, rather than trusting in the patience of the reader. The theme of this short-story collection is masculine infidelity.
The protagonist of all the stories but one, Yunior, is along with his brother and father a serial philanderer. Though Yunior has his share of longing and vulnerability, the main reason for his cheating seems to be cultural training. In any case, this understandably gets him into trouble and makes him miserable, as he undermines his every relationship. I admit that the struggles of a young man to stop making obviously bad decisions that hurt people did not strike a chord in me.
This was especially true since he does not spend much time in contemplating how it must feel from the other side of infidelity. And though he does appear to show some signs of growth by the final story, this growth is notably not any substantial increase in empathy. In any case, I found the exposition monotonous and predictable: the exhilaration of forbidden sex followed by the disappointment of getting caught.
Two stories stand out as exceptions. These stories aside, I admit that I did not sympathize with Yunior and his obsessive focus on relationships—past and current, failed and failing. But I did finish this book very quickly, reading most of it in one setting, which means it cannot be all bad. Indeed, it can be very entertaining—like verbal CGI.
View all 13 comments. Oct 08, Arria rated it really liked it. I'm a big fan of Junot. I own all 3 of his books and love when he has a story featured in The New Yorker which is how I discovered him, many moons ago, in high school.
Diaz has a way with words, that much is certain. Each story has it's own little gem and specialness to it. This book is comprised of 9 short stories, most of them intertwined, linking the main character, Yunior, with his dealings with women, his dickhead brother, Rafa, who is arrogan I'm a big fan of Junot. This book is comprised of 9 short stories, most of them intertwined, linking the main character, Yunior, with his dealings with women, his dickhead brother, Rafa, who is arrogant and cancer-stricken; their mother, who has the patience of a saint dealing with his Rafa, and there is a bit of a theme of cheating in the stories.
Yunior seems to want to be a better man and stay away from the infidelity gene that has touched both his jerky, cold father and womanizing, unempathetic brother. The Dominican background and stories color this book all the more for the better, as usual, and give it that "glitter" that Junot knows how to lace through with some awesome prose.
It can be beautiful and sad and funny and you are endeared to Yunior who is navigating the waters of the female species, only to disappoint and be disappointed in both himself and his actions. It's almost like he just can't win. Mostly by his own choices and decisions.
It's kind of heartbreaking. My favorite story is "Alma. It follows Yunior who begins sleeping with an older woman while cheating on his girlfriend Paloma. Yunior has cheated on his sweet girlfriend Magda which she discovers because his sidepiece informs her about it. Yunior invites Magda on a trip to the Dominican Republic for the purpose of rekindling their now-infidelity-broken romance.
How she loves him in this sad way yet does not trust him and can't relax enough to enjoy their relationship, always wondering if he's going to go back to his wife. A realization that maybe, this is as good as it gets. Maybe he did have the best and screwed it up. Women always have a way of disappearing on Yunior, becoming ghosts never to be seen again. I wouldn't say this is a book about "love.
It eludes. And sometimes, there's only yourself to blame. Junot nails it. Sep 23, Jennifer rated it really liked it Recommended to Jennifer by: Inprint. Shelves: own , read , author-event-met , format-short-story. He showed up on stage in tennis shoes and blue jeans and held the audience completely captive.
He was exceedingly liberal with his language, which, by the way, works its way into his books. And I loved him. He told the audience that it takes him three to four years to write one short story! Nothing is wrong for the thing you love to be really hard, and it is okay to suck. The average reader is open, more receptive, and way cooler than the writer. Readers excuse flaws, make up for gaps, and stitch plots together. Readers are happy to see you! This event definitely colored my reading of the book.
I hate short stories. There so many intertwined levels in this book. Throughout each story, Yunior experiences far more loss than love; Yunior is simply fated to mourn loss. I loved Yunior because he was a character that looked like you or me: Human, flawed, and brutally real.
The past haunts us, and Yunior is no exception. Oct 23, Janet rated it it was amazing. Voice, voice, voice. What a treasure. This slim volume of nine short stories, about the battlefield of love. There's cheating. And searching. Being with one you don't want. Each building has its own laundry room, Papi explained.
Mami looked vaguely out of the snout of her parka and nodded. I was watching the snow sift over itself, terrified, and my brother was cracking his knuckles.
This was our first day in the States. The world was frozen solid. Our apartment seemed huge to us. Rafa and I had a room to ourselves and the kitchen, with its refrigerator and stove, was about the size of our house on Sumner Welles. Beads of water gathered on the windows like bees and we had to wipe the glass to see outside.
Rafa and I were stylish in our new clothes and we wanted out, but Papi told us to take off our boots and our parkas.
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