This Is How You Lose Her

The new collection of short stories from the masterful Junot Díaz catches up with Yunior, the character that connected his first collection, Drown and narrates The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. That Yunior is a cipher for Junot Díaz himself is a given. And what a collection it is.

Yunior lives, loves and loses… frequently. Junot Díaz delights in dangling what he most wants in front of him and then slowly taking it away, allowing Yunior to drown himself in self-doubt and self-delusion, hoist by his own petard. Yunior gets into scrapes, affairs and the way of his dad. He goes with his dad to see his mistress, fights with his brother, who is dying of cancer and repeats all the mistakes he sees around him, the ones he judges the harshest. Yunior is quite the vulnerable masochist.

All this, each story from the brilliant 'Nilda' concerning his affection for his brother's girlfriend to the elegiac heartbreaking 'The Cheater's Guide to Love' is delivered with the trademark Diaz style - effortlessly loose in its honed perfection, snappy dialogue peppered with Spanglish and the wry nerdy sarcastic tone that makes Junot Díaz's writing sparkle. One of the year's best collections from one of the world's most effortlessly brilliant writers.