This Is How You Lose Her
“Junot Díaz writes in an idiom so electrifying and distinct it’s
practically an act of aggression, at once enthralling, even erotic in
its assertion of sudden intimacy…[It is] a syncopated swagger-step
between opacity and transparency, exclusion and inclusion, defiance and
desire…His prose style is so irresistible, so sheerly entertaining, it
risks blinding readers to its larger offerings. Yet he weds form so
ideally to content that instead of blinding us, it becomes the very lens
through which we can see the joy and suffering of the signature Díaz
subject: what it means to belong to a diaspora, to live out the
possibilities and ambiguities of perpetual insider/outsider status.”
New York Times Book Review
Among shortlisted titles for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2012
Among shortlisted titles for National Book Award, 2012
Finalist for the 2012 National Book Award
A Time and People Top 10 Book of 2012
Finalist for the 2012 Story Prize
Chosen as a notable or best book of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The LA Times, Newsday, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, the iTunes bookstore, and many more...
"Electrifying." –The New York Times Book Review
“Exhibits the potent blend of literary eloquence and street cred that earned him a Pulitzer Prize… Díaz’s prose is vulgar, brave, and poetic.” –O Magazine
From the award-winning author, a stunning collection that celebrates the haunting, impossible power of love.
On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In a New Jersey laundry room, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness--and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses.
In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, these stories lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”
Praise