This Is How You Lose Her

I couldn't wait for Junot Diaz's new short story collection, This Is How You Lose Her, to come out. I kept hearing so much about it, about him, and the excitement built and built until I didn't think I could stand it. I only had to wait a week to get it from the library, but my impatience made it seem much, much longer.

The funny thing was once I started reading, I couldn't remember why I was salivating over it so much. I adored Diaz's novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but had lukewarm feelings about his first short story collection, Drown. I enjoy Diaz's writing and the honesty that accompanies his prose, but sometimes I find the way his characters talk and/or think about women to be very unpalatable, particularly regarding the character of Yunior, who reappears again and again in Diaz's work. My favorite story in this collection is The Cheater's Guide to Love and I liked its (also the book's) final line, a bittersweet ending.

After I set down the book and had time to reconcile my feelings, I realize that my literary side loved it while my feminist side hated it. In the end my opposing feelings toward it balance one another out and I have rather neutral feelings about This is How You Lose Her. It definitely has both virtues and shortcomings, which makes it a delightfully flawed, accessible read.