This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

After enjoying his Pulitzer Prize Winning book a couple of years ago I looked forward to reading this collection of inter connected short stories. Centering primarily on his previous character Yunior, a small character in his Oscar book, we learn about the ways that Yunior's inability to be faithful has affected his relationships.

In it's totality the collection is a disappointment. I think that Diaz is a wonderful writer and I am not put off by the dialect that he writes in, as his characters primarily are Dominican and thus they speak in this dialects.

I think, that for the most part, people have a hard time connecting with a book or a character if they do not find something, anything, likable in the book or it's characters. Try as one might this is a struggle in Diaz's writing.

A couple of the stories were stronger than the others. A couple of the stories were previously published in The New Yorker. I forget that a quite small percentage of people read that magazine so is very common for author's to later reproduce their work in their own collections.

Something also off putting for me though certainly not related to the story directly is the fact that Diaz is a writing teacher at MIT. I am not a prude, I think writers have been challenging the acceptable standards for many decades and will continue to do so. For me Diaz is different. His writing is crude, in some ways vulgar, and as some of his writing seems autobiographical and a great percentage of his characters have misogynistic tendencies I do have questions about him teaching writing. I am sure that is just a middle aged white man's concerns but there you have it.

I think that my reading stack will have to be pretty short for me to pick up another Diaz book.

We the Animals by Justin Torres

This short book has gotten much buzz and more praise this fall. At just 144 pages this is a one night book told in a series of vignettes of life in the home of three young boys from upstate New York.

Their father is Puerto Rican and their mother is white. The father moves from job to job while the mother works the graveyard shift in a brewery. Life is not easy.

I am sure part of my issue with this book is that culturally this book is so far removed from the life I led as a child is that it is hard to relate to. While I have enjoyed the Southern culture of Faulkner and actually quite enjoyed Junot Diaz's book a few years ago but this books makes me feel country and whitebread for sure.

These boys curse, are rude to strangers. steal, fight and kick. Theor house is an everchanging envrionment based on the moods and daily struggles their parents face.

A couple vignettes are quite interesting, the boys father purchases a truck that the mother does not approve of, for one but for me this book was, while I might be able to appreciate it as literature, I certainly did not connect with it. Nothing to rememeber for me.