Junot Diaz - This Is How You Lose Her, Or "I Am Lost In The Pits Of Jones Library"

Hi there!
I'm writing to you from some place in the Amherst / Jones Library basement. I can't get the window next to me to open and a white guy with dreads is reading The Valley Advocate in front of me with his socks and shoes off.  ~* weeestteerrrnn maaassss *~

Anyways, the reason I'm here writing to you instead of from the comfort of my iCloud bed and air conditioning is because it has been a long ass time since I read This Is How You Lose Her. Like, long enough for me to have taken the book out, read it, returned it, it was taken out by someone else & presumably read, and then returned. But I've got it once again! And I am going to tell you what I thought of it!! YEAH!

According to my GoodReads, I finished This Is How You Lose Her on June 12. I believe I had started it two days before. In that two days I annoyed my roommate to no end making her listen to my badly butchered renditions of my favorite passages.

This Is How You Lose Her is a collection of nine short stories that are all interlinked. Despite knowing this going into reading it, I was a little frustrated because some characters and their stories captured me a lot more than others and I was disappointed to leave them. Each story feels complete and whole, yet the collection seems to exist perfectly as a single unit as well. The stories hit home in a strange way. I've known Yunior. I've felt like Alma. I've seen the bitterness of loss turn lovers into Magdalenas. The stories are relatable, but at the same time intensely personal in a way that isn't mine.

I rated This Is How You Lose Her five stars. Thumbing through it again after a few weeks and re-reading my favorite stories and passages, I wish I could rate it a six. This was my first Diaz read and even though I just came to Jones to look through this book and write about it, I'm leaving with Diaz's Drown in tow because I simply couldn't resist.

Here's my favorite passage. It made the stones of my vertebrae crumble into bits:

"That night you lay in bed, awake, and listened to the ambulances tear down our street. The heat of your face could have kept my room warm for days. I didn't know how you stood the heat of yourself, of your breasts, of your face. I almost couldn't touch you. Out of nowhere you said, I love you. For whatever it's worth." (Diaz, Junot. "Flaca". This Is How You Lose Her.)

I'll end my post here because there's nothing to say after that passage. You should read this book.





Currently listening to: The sound of this white guy with dreads flipping through personal ads and rubbing his bare feet together. :o) I forgot my headphones.