This Is How You Lose Her
Junot Díaz's second collection returns to Yunior, the narrator of Drown, as he fails his way through relationships with women who are smarter and more perceptive than he is. The prose moves between Spanish and English with the speed of someone who grew up inside both languages and does not owe anyone a translation. The stories are about infidelity, immigration, and the particular shame of being a man who knows he is messing up even as he keeps going.Riverhead's paperback edition presents the collection in a compact format, appropriate for stories that read quickly and stay uncomfortably. Díaz is funniest when he is most honest about his characters' failures, and this is for readers who can laugh at a narrator while recognizing themselves in him.
