{"id":2488,"date":"2012-09-11T05:16:21","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T05:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2488"},"modified":"2012-10-27T06:45:33","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T06:45:33","slug":"this-is-how-you-lose-her-by-junot-diaz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2488","title":{"rendered":"This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Faber and Faber 6 September 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

224 pp, paperback, 12.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Catherine Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Love in all its forms gets the once-over in this collection of New Jersey Dominican voices, linked by Yunior, the lesson-learning character at its heart, who is destined to have the \u2018footprint of fresh disaster\u2019 on his soul. The precarious wit of the love-struck, the inevitable mourning of the sexual chancer, the bitter lack of expectation of the mistress \u2013 all are laid bare with details that hide a story in each small shell of a sentence.<\/p>\n

Dominican-American Diaz, who won the Pulitzer in 2008 for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar<\/em> Wao<\/em>, has said he enjoys telling \u2018stories with a central absence\u2019 and favours the form of a linked story collection, remarking, \u2018I guess I\u2019m just hopelessly fascinated by the realities that you can assemble out of connected fragments.\u2019<\/p>\n

To begin, in \u2018The Sun, the Moon, the Stars\u2019, Yunior marks losing an early, important relationship with the effortless humour of a young man still dull about love, describing his girlfriend\u2019s discovery of his affair thus: \u2018She threw Cassandra\u2019s letter at me \u2013 it missed and landed under a Volvo \u2013 and then she sat down on the curb and started hyperventilating.\u2019<\/p>\n

A sense of menacing disappointment travels with the couple on a make-or-break holiday to Santo Domenico; on the one hand she is too sensitive\u00a0 –\u00a0 \u2018takes to hurt the way water takes to paper\u2019 – but she has also been dressing better and going out, after discovering the games he was playing. \u2018Making me aware of my precarious position in her life,\u2019 is how Yunior sees it.<\/p>\n

Each sentence ripples with throwaway brilliance \u2013 \u2018a flapjack of makeup\u2019 on the faces of fellow passengers on their faces. The street where he was born \u2018hasn\u2019t decided if it wants to be a slum or not\u2019. Their resort has courtesy golf carts, \u2018beaches the way the rest of the Island has got problems\u2019, and everywhere a wealthy European with a young \u2018dark-assed Domenican girl\u2019 on his arm. Remarks Yunior, \u2018You can tell by their inability to communicate that these two didn\u2019t meet back in their Left bank days.\u2019<\/p>\n

In \u2018Nilda\u2019, a 14-year-old recalls a raft of his brother\u2019s girlfriends\u00a0 – \u2018I don\u2019t remember her name, but I do remember how her perm shone in the glow of our night-light\u2019 \u2013 in a piece that resonates with the fleeting possibilities of adolescence, how fresh they seem until you look back. In \u2018Alma\u2019, the cheater\u2019s moment of discovery is described with the mournful wit of a man accepting the inevitable – \u2018your heart plunges through you like a fat bandit through a hangman\u2019s trap\u2019.<\/p>\n

The heads and tails of love are here: men being caught – as inferior morally or intellectually; the strength of lust against the weakness of the head; women being strong and quiet and bitter, with the \u2018scared, hunted look of the unlucky\u2019 or with \u2018a mouth like unswept glass \u2013 when you least expect it she cuts you.\u2019<\/p>\n

There are days \u2018the colour of pigeons\u2019, there are realizations too – \u2018This is what I know: people\u2019s hopes go on forever\u2019. Running through is the sense of dread of the trapped, in or out of a relationship, and how close in meaning are the words loss and love.\u00a0 \u2018You don\u2019t want to let go, but don\u2019t want to be hurt, either. It\u2019s not a great place to be but what can I tell you?\u2019<\/p>\n

In \u2019Invierno\u2019, Yunior \u2013 with a brother who wants to be buried in his car with his TV and boxing gloves – relates his childhood with a mother keen her two sons learn English. \u2018She saw our young minds as bright, spiky sunflowers in need of light, and arranged us as close to the TV as possible to maximize our exposure.\u2019\u00a0 In their new home \u2013 away from Santo Domenico \u2013 the brothers\u00a0 \u2018squirted acid at each other with eyes, like reptiles\u2019 as their mother \u2013 \u2018with a tight, guarded smile that seemed to drift across the room the way a shadow drifts slowly across a wall\u2019 – dances attendance on her husband and his infrequent dinner guests .<\/p>\n

All love\u2019s voices are here – the pitiful, crestfallen, the older mistress, Miss Lora – \u2018the black waves of her hair flowing behind her like a school of eel\u2019 in the swimming pool\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0 tapping an upbeat rhythm to determinedly cheerful hopelessness, and the man at the heart of it keeping an attitude going because what else do you do?<\/p>\n

Over the last 16 years, Yunior has been an integral character for Diaz, and the author describes This is How You Lose Her<\/em> as\u00a0 \u2018one cheater\u2019s tortured journey through to real heartbreak, a crisis from which he emerges, if not necessarily cured, at least closer to possessing something we could call an authentic human self\u2019.<\/p>\n

I raced through these stories, longing to start back all over again, not wanting the relationship to end. This is, no doubt about it, how it should be done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Catherine Jones<\/p>\n

Each sentence ripples with throwaway brilliance \u2013 \u2018a flapjack of makeup\u2019 on the faces of fellow passengers on their faces. The street where he was born \u2018hasn\u2019t decided if it wants to be a slum or not\u2019. Their resort has courtesy golf carts, \u2018beaches the way the rest of the Island has got problems\u2019, and everywhere a wealthy European with a young \u2018dark-assed Domenican girl\u2019 on his arm. Remarks Yunior, \u2018You can tell by their inability to communicate that these two didn\u2019t meet back in their Left bank days.\u2019[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2488"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3014,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488\/revisions\/3014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}