Review: This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz (Book)
Fresh. So fresh, and I thought I was near given up on fiction. I've been feeling tired, a little bored when reading fiction/made up stories. But looking at the size of this (pretty thin) I decided to give it a go. It was Saturday morning after all.
50 pages in I wasn't totally convinced. I'd put it down twice and looked at the pile of maybes to my right, but after another 20 pages, I was asking Nat if she could make me another coffee and what we were doing with our morning. (Meaning, can we stay in bed a little longer and read?) Something about the writing style had got me, and I was determined to find out what.
Well, now I've finished it, and I know what it was. It's fresh, feels new, and it's very real. I'm not Dominican, nor do I have a record of regular cheating on my partners, but there were several times, when I knew exactly how the main character Yunior was feeling. It's relatable, and that's pretty important when you're reading fiction.
My interest in Spanish probably helped me enjoy this book most. If you're currently learning the language and want to further yourself with some light-ish reading, then give this a go. Be warned, you'll probably end up just learning several ways of saying each swearword, but that's all part of the fun.
Here's a small part from the book:
One day the sister was out by herself and I followed her to the field. Huge concrete pipes sprawled here and there on the snow. She ducked into one of these and I followed her, crawling on my knees.
She sat in the pipe, cross-legged and grinning. She took her hands out of her mittens and rubbed them together. We were out of the wind and I followed her example. She poked a finger at me.
We sat there for a while, my head aching with my desire to communicate, and she kept blowing on her hands. Then she heard her brother calling and she scrambled out of the pipe. I stepped out too. She was standing next to her brother. When he saw me he yelled something and threw a snowball in my direction. I threw one back.
I like this part. This is Yunior as a kid, and already we see his interest in girls, or people in general. But this is before he'll notice women in a sexual way. This is a part where him, his mum and brother, are all holed up indoors whilst it's snowing heavily outside. It describes life as we know it, and he captures a child's imagination, curiosity and voice perfectly.
As the kid Yunior gets older, he comes face to face with the temptations of cheating on his partner, and as the title suggest, he does just that. He says it was always going to happen. It's a Dominican thing. His father done it, his brother done it, it was inevitable. But he's not proud of it. Just can't seem to shake it off.
I think this is why I liked the book, because Junot didn't try and beat around the bush. It's brave writing, straight in, told modernly. And it's fast and has energy, quite like the Spanish language. But I think the best thing is, he's captured a culture and a time, and that is what makes artists. Write about what you know. He's done that, and he's done it terrifically.
I'll be looking out for more of his books. Luckily for me, this was a freebie from my workplace, but the others I'll buy for sure. Well worth a read. 7/10.
