This Is How You Lose Her is Junot Díaz’s new collection of inventive stories, all but one narrated by Yunior, a young Dominican serial cheater, and same voice of Diaz’s previous works, Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but this book can certainly stand up straight on its own.

As we follow Yunior through his New Jersey life, we meet his many women. This is a tale of infidelity and unfaithfulness; the tales honest and energetic, which makes you simultaneously frustrated with and sympathetic towards the unlucky Yunior, who cannot learn from his own mistakes. In almost every story he drives away the new woman who has captured his heart; after a small period of wallowing self-pity, he only repeats his atrocities again.

There are though a couple of stories which differ from the main; ‘Otravida, Otravez’, the only story not narrated by Yunior, and instead, we get a women’s perspective; its tone very different to the rest of the book, a tale of hardship and hope, much tenderer than Yunior’s narration. Most moving though is the tale of Yunior’s family’s move to the USA. We follow the family as they struggle with a harsh new language; witnessing Yunior’s failed attempts to make friends with the white neighbours. The quiet beauty of such breathtaking scenes are made so unsentimental that it appears a seemingly effortless piece of writing.

Díaz’s new collection is doubtlessly a success, a perfect combination of humour and distress, energy and misfortune. His use of Spanish words and phrases makes the writing vivid and real, and you cannot help but think that Yunior is Díaz’s alter-ego, particularly when he cleverly manoeuvres Yunior into an author at the end of the book. A collection of love stories and doomed relationships, This Is How You Lose Her demonstrates perfectly what happens when you’re ruled by your heart, and not by your head.

 

This Is How You Lose Her is available now from Faber

Words: Llio Maddocks