This Is How You Lose Her (Diaz)

Book Reviews
Junot Díaz has one of the most distinctive and magnetic voices in contemporary fiction: limber, streetwise, caffeinated and wonderfully eclectic.... The strongest tales are those fueled by the verbal energy and magpie language that made Brief Wondrous Life so memorable and that capture Yunior’s efforts to commute between two cultures, Dominican and American, while always remaining an outsider.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


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.
Leah Hager Cohen - New York Times Book Review


Drown, [Diaz's] 1996 collection of stories, was widely praised for its verve and searing honesty. Readers of that and [The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao] will find much to love in This Is How You Lose Her. Written in a singular idiom of Spanglish, hip-hop poetry and professorial erudition, it is comic in its mopiness, charming in its madness and irresistible in its heartfelt yearning.
Ron Hansen - Washington Post


In Diaz’s magisterial voice, the trials and tribulations of sex-obsessed objectifiers become a revelation.
Boston Globe


[A] propulsive new collection…[that] succeeds not only because of the author's gift for exploring the nuances of the male…but because of a writing style that moves with the rhythm and grace of a well-danced merengue.
Seattle Times


Díaz writes with subtle and sharp brilliance. … He dazzles us with his language skills and his story-making talents, bringing us a narrative that is starkly vernacular and sophisticated, stylistically complex and direct. ….A spectacular read.
Díaz writes with subtle and sharp brilliance. … He dazzles us with his language skills and his story-making talents, bringing us a narrative that is starkly vernacular and sophisticated, stylistically complex and direct. ….A spectacular read.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune


These stories...are virtuosic, command performances that mine the deceptive, lovelorn hearts of men with the blend of tenderness, comedy and vulgarity of early Philip Roth. It's Diaz's voice that's such a delight, and it is every bit his own, a melting-pot pastiche of Spanglish and street slang, pop culture and Dominican culture, and just devastating descriptive power, sometimes all in the same sentence.
USA Today


This collection of stories, like everything else [Díaz has] written, feels vital in the literal sense of the word. Tough, smart, unflinching, and exposed, This is How You Lose Her is the perfect reminder of why Junot Díaz won the Pulitzer Prize...[He] writes better about the rapid heartbeat of urban life than pretty much anyone else.
Christian Science Monitor


Exhibits the potent blend of literary eloquence and street cred that earned him a Pulitzer Prize…Diaz’s prose is vulgar, brave, and poetic.
O Magazine


Searing, irresistible new stories…It’s a harsh world  Diaz conjures but  one filled also with beauty and humor and buoyed by the stubborn resilience of the human spirit.
People


The centripetal force of Díaz’s sensibility and the slangy bar-stool confidentiality of his voice that he makes this hybridization feel not only natural and irresistible, but inevitable, the voice of the future…[This is How You Lose Her] manages to be achingly sad and joyful at the same time. Its heart is true, even if Yunior’s isn’t.
Salon


(Starred review.) Searing, sometimes hilarious, and always disarming.... Readers will remember why everyone wants to write like Díaz, bring him home, or both. Raw and honest, these stories pulsate with raspy ghetto hip-hop and the subtler yet more vital echo of the human heart.
Publishers Weekly


Díaz’s third book is as stunning as its predecessors. These stories are hard and sad, but in Díaz’s hands they also crackle.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Each taut tale of unrequited and betrayed love and family crises is electric with passionate observations and off-the-charts emotional and social intelligence.... Fast-paced, unflinching, complexly funny, street-talking tough...Díaz’s gripping stories unveil lives shadowed by prejudice and poverty and bereft of reliable love and trust. These are...lives in which intimacy is a lost art, masculinity a parody, and kindness, reason, and hope struggle to survive like seedlings in a war zone.
Booklist