The whole book felt completely fresh and surprising, and even a day after finishing I'm still feeling hopped up on it. It's an unabashedly hetero-masculine point of view, in a way that specifically excludes women from identifying with it. This sounds negative but that's not at all how I (as a woman) experienced the book; rather, it was eye-opening and exhilarating and, well, fresh and surprising.

There were a lot of slang words, which I had to look up. There were a lot of Spanish words, which I had to look up. There were a lot of $50 Harvard words, which I had to look up. This mix of street/Latino/highbrow made the book vivid and vibrant.

Highly recommend. ( )

Junot Díaz is a remarkable writer. There are moments in this book that are intensely and uncomfortably honest. I admire that and recommend it to readers.

However. The focus of the book is largely on (failed) romantic relationships; that intense confessional tone comes from the men in the stories. Women, here, are never full agents; never full people. I get that this is part of the story and the characters, I've appreciated a lot about Díaz' comments and answers on this topic; but the fact remains that there's nothing in this book that acknowledges me as a human in a conversation about human relationships, and I'm left with no way to connect to that conversation. ( )

This is How You Lose Her is a series of short stories written around the theme of relationships breaking up, mostly from the point of view of a guy whose actions lead to the breakup.

Most of the stories feature Yunior, a young Dominican immigrant living in a broken home in New Jersey. Yunior's brother Rafi is extremely sick, and their father has walked out on them.

Yunior characterises himself as "not a bad guy" although some of his actions and ethics tend to contradict that. Diaz presents him as more of a flawed hero, trying to escape the poverty trap he was born into, and struggling to make sense of the complex inter-generational, inter-sexual and inter-racial norms that prevail in his world.

Sometimes the men in Diaz's stories makes horrendous mistakes, and you don't wonder that their women stand on their pride and walk. In other stories, they are clearly being taken advantage of. Diaz manages to create a set of strong and believable characters with very different but understandable motivations for their actions. There are no real villains in these stories, just people trying to find a way to love and survive in a difficult world.

The stories are written in a pacy and humorous manner, although Diaz sometimes deploys Spanish dialog and idioms to an extent that puzzles the English-speaking reader. This occasionally makes you feel like you've missed a joke, but it never ruins the story. Overall this is a very enjoyable book.

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Only read two of these stories (#1 and 'Alma'). Not to my taste -- and I found Yunior's voice not completely credible...

I don't know how to write about this book. Not what I would normally read, but I felt like I needed to read something by Junot Diaz, the way some people feel compelled to read Dickens or Hemingway. Compelling story about a culture I knew nothing about--not just Dominican but also men. I spend so much of my reading life with female protagonists and narrators, so reading a male narrator was definitely an experience.

Incidentally, Diaz' writing reminded me very much of Hemingway--void of adverbs or unnecessary setting-descriptions--which is a good thing. I loved just getting lost in the storytelling.

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