Fitting title - it definitely lost me. Just didn't keep me interested at all. Ended up giving up about halfway through. ( )

First things first: this book has one of the best titles ever. What's more amazing is how it comes from a line in the book--so you know it is coming but it still packs a wallop.

My only real criticism comes from something outside of the text. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Diaz once talked about why it takes him so long to write. He explained the gap of years due to him being similar to a method actor: he has to become the people he writes about. But, looking back on this book, and what I've learned about him in the years since it was written, I'm not sure if that is true. The detail of the breakups (and behavior) almost seems like memoir.

Still, that's not a knock! It's wonderfully well written, funny, succinct, and super colorful. And the sequencing of the short stories is amazing. Especially the emotional impact of the last one.

Recommended. ( )

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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