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Loading... Drownby Junot Diaz
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. What struck me most about Drown was the book's coherence and sustained interest levels over its entire length. I admit to not liking collections of short fiction very much--but what Drown did was recapture my attention just as it was about to drift away, using unique and unexpected new techniques in the stories. By "Edison, New Jersey" I was tired, even though it was probably my favorite story out of them all. I was tired of the consistency of the narrator's voice, always describing similarly hopeless scenes from his life. Then, "How to Date a Browngirl..." shocked me back into paying attention with its remarkable shift from first-person past-tense POV to second-person instructional POV. "No Face" continued to demand my attention with its present tense and different narrator. What I learned can also be applied within an individual short story: it is the ability to recapture the audience's attention, to continue to surprise them when they think they've got it all figured out, that I appreciated the most out of this collection. (  ) stephxsu | Sep 16, 2009 |  A young Dominican immigrant to the US tells of his fatherless youth in the poverty of the Dominican Republic, of his father and mother's reunion when he is nine, and of his adolescence in New Jersey. This very well-done story is told from both his point of view and from his father's point of view. Diaz does a great job of showing the social and economic factors that led to this young man becoming who he is. This short book is well worth your time, I highly recommend it. (  ) OneMorePage | May 15, 2009 | I had to start this one a few times, as it failed to grip my attention. There were some storylines I enjoyed more than others, but overall the collection of stories was mediocre. I can't say I loved this book... nor did I dislike it. It was just OK. (  ) momma2keira | Mar 23, 2009 | Now THESE are some short stories. ( ) miriamparker | Mar 19, 2009 | I got this from the library after reading Diaz's short story Alma in the New Yorker which I absolutely loved. I liked two stories in Drown: Ysrael where the narrator and his brother conspire to unmask the kid with no face, and Aurora, a gritty and depressing account of the drug dealing narrator's love for a crack whore. Aurora's narrator reappears in Drown, which I didnt like at all. The gay context comes across in a shamelessly manipulative "homosexuality sells" kind of manner. The kid with no face also reappears in a short story from his pov - that's quite good but the connectedness yet lack of continuity bothered me (pretty much throughout the book). The bigger problem with Diaz's writing here I felt was that it was sparse and Chekhovian and that needs really interesting characters and/or really brutal circumstances/events. Here it's the case only with Ysrael and Aurora. The longest story in the book, the last one about the narrator's father, is the worst - primarly because the style is totally unsuitable for this hardly earth-shattering character.I'm probably going to try one of his later works to see if Alma wasnt a one-shot... this one doesnt deserve more than 2 stars. (  ) chengiz | Jan 19, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0679776575, Paperback)El lector tiene en sus manos una colección de relatos que viene precedida de una enorme expectación. Su autor, seleccionado por Newsweek como uno de los diez nuevos rostros para el noventa y seis, nos transporta desde los pueblos y parajes polvorientos de su tierra natal, la República Dominicana, hasta los barrios industrials y el paisaje urbano de New Jersey, bajo un horizonte de chimeneas humeantes. La obra triunfal que marcó el arranque literario de Junot Díaz puede ahora disfrutarse en una edición en español que conserva en su integridad la fuerza desabrida y la delicadeza del texto original.Los niños y jóvenes que pueblan las páginas de Negocios gravitan sin sosiego por territorios marginales, a mitad de camino entre la inocencia y la experiencia, entre la curiosidad infantil y la crueldad más descarnada. Criados en hogares abandonados por el padre, donde todo se sostiene gracias a la férrea abegación de la madre, estos adolescentes acarician sueños de independencia, asomándose con recelo a un mundo donde intuyen que no hay un lugar reservado para ellos. En estos diez relatos la prosa de Junot Díaz oscila con sabiduría entre el humor, la desolación y la ternura, desplegando en cada página un estilo palpitante de vida. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:52 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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