This is How You Lose Her

This is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz, is a collection of linked short stories about a group of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and their struggles in the lower rungs of American society. The memorable tales are strung together by those involving Yunior--a reckless nerd whose infidelities are matched only by his longing for connection.

We first met Yunior in Junot Diaz's debut collection, Drown (1996), and he later appears as the narrator in Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008).  Now middle-aged and a professor at a Boston university, Junior is still self-absorbed and devoid of insights into himself or the women in his life.  "I'm not a bad guy," he reflects in the first story.  "I'm like everyone else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good." (p. 2)

As the stories go back and forth in time, the reader comes to understand how Junior became the misogynist that he is. We are introduced to his mother, who along with Junior and his brother, Rafa, are brought to an East Coast tenement by the father. Both father and older brother set poor examples for the young Yunior.  His father, when he is at the apartment, makes the family stay indoors and severely punishes the boys if they are not silent. He leaves for days on end and eventually abandons his family altogether. Similarly, Rafa objectifies women and goes from one relationship to another. Yet Diaz makes him a sympathetic character--a young man struck down by illness who refuses to acknowledge his losing battle with death. Diaz also highlights Yunior's thwarted efforts--since early childhood-- to emotionally connect with his brother.  Instead, Yunior finds his advances are met with verbal aggression and hurtful blows.

Diaz paints memorable characters throughout this collection. The women portrayed are all colorful, but none stand out more than Yasmin--the Dominican woman who  manages a hospital laundry.  Her boyfriend, a married man whose wife and children are back in the D.R., wants to buy a house with her. We never know if she truly loves this man, or if she and he are driven together out of loneliness and alienation. Yasmin knows that she is usurping another woman's love and the moral dilemma troubles her. Yet she cannot bring herself to leave him.

This is How You Lose Her is as funny as it is heartbreaking. Junot Diaz skillfully depicts men and women battling against poverty as they try, and fail, to live the American Dream. Interweaving literary English with Spanglish, hip-hop dialect, and language from The Lord of the Rings, the book's prose is brilliant .To quote Carmen Gimenez Smith in her NPR interview:  "It is an engrossing, ambitious book for readers who demand of their fiction both emotional precision and linguistic daring." (www.npr.org, September 13, 2012)


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After the Armistice Ball

This book, first published in 2005, is the first in the Dandy Gliver series by Catriona McPherson. The time period is just after the first world war has ended and the location is Scotland. Dandy Gliver is a high society woman, married to Hugh. They have survived the war relatively unscathed, both survived and they can still afford their properties. Dandy and Hugh live in Perthshire in their manor house along with Dandy's maid, Grant. Dandy is bored now that the war is over and her nursing duties have come to end. She's tired of the social circuit already.

After the Esslemont's ball celebrating the armistice Dandy learns that the famous Duffy diamonds are missing, allegedly taken from Lena Duffy's room after the ball. She knows that Lena Duffy had them on the night of the ball. Lena, her husband Gregory and their 2 daughters (Clemence and Clara) were all at the ball. Clara is engage to be married to Alec. The girls are as different as two sisters can possibly be.

Dandy is called by her friend Daisy Esslemont to find the diamonds. It seems that Lena has demanded that the Esslemonts pay for the diamonds even though no police report has been filed. Hints at blackmail start. Dandy is invited to another dinner to start her investigation.  There is the theft of the diamonds, dark pasts of some of the characters and a murder to all deal with. What she discovers is not what she was hoping for.

This is a nice little cozy mystery. The story moves along, nothing too earth shaking and the time period and the location are interesting. Big country houses at a time when the families who owned them had suffered devastating losses in the war. It's not just the returning soldiers who have mental problems. I liked this book and have continued on with the series. If you are looking for a new set of cozy mysteries to read, I recommend these.

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Peter Criss' From Makeup to Breakup

About a year ago I posted a review of Ace Frehley's memoir No Regrets. Apparently Kiss bandmate Peter Criss was inspired (or felt challenged) to write his own memoir, entitled Makeup to Breakup. It's going to be hard to sell either of these memoirs to you if you're not a fan of Kiss, but if you are a fan then you'll certainly be satisfied by reading either (or both). I'd say that Criss' memoir is the better of the two since he seems to remember a lot more, though at times his level of detail is a little too much.

Criss was the eldest member of Kiss and after drumming in a number of  New York bands he was brought in to the band before it had recorded an album by an ad in Rolling Stone magazine. Criss is excellent at offering portraits of the band members as they changed through the years. He seems to have some affection for Gene Simmons, though he mostly portrays him as arrogant and ultimately cutthroat. Some of the details of Simmons' lack of hygiene must be read to be believed. Ace Frehley, who entered the band at around the same time as Criss, is shown to be a lazy drug addict and drunk though he was perhaps the one that was Criss' greatest friend in the band in the early days. Paul Stanley remains enigmatic (as was the case in Frehley's biography as well) and in love with his own reflection.

Criss also does a good job giving credit to Bill Aucoin who managed Kiss in its earliest days and even paid for their tours with his own American Express card before the band was able to make it to the big time. We also get stories of seemingly every girlfriend that Criss has had, including multiple ex-wives (and one current one).

It's pretty clear that Criss feels betrayed and cheated by his former bandmates and much of the second half of this book is dedicated to clearing the air about how he was treated on later reunion tours. We also learn about his drinking, his depression and his medical issues, including a late bout with breast cancer. As far as rock star biographies go, this is a pretty entertaining one with much credit going to Larry "Ratso" Sloman, who has co-authored a number of other musician biographies. Unfortunately, at times it also feels like Criss needs to fit in every single anecdote that he can remember, so it does occasionally feel wearying. But if you are the audience for this kind of book there is no reason why you won't enjoy it.

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A Thousand Mornings: Poems

In A Thousand Mornings (2012), acclaimed poet Mary Oliver once again transports us to the beauty that surrounds her coastal home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her poems pay homage to the myriad forest creatures--birds, foxes, snakes, opossums--and examine her relationship to them. Take, for example, her title poem, "A Thousand Mornings:"


All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disapointed?) for redbird to sing.

Throughout the book, Oliver takes a bemused stance toward her own tendency to over-analyze. She is always aware of how small her life is compared to the vastness of the ocean or the eternity of nature. Consider her poem, "The Gardener."

Have I lived enough?
Have I loved enough
Have I considered Right Action enough, have I
      come to any conclusion?
Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?

I say this, or perhaps I'm just thinking it.
      Actually, I probably think too much.

Then I step out into the garden
where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man, 
      is tending his children, the roses.

An article by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mary-oliver) notes that Mary Oliver has been compared to other great American lyric poets and celebrators of nature, including Mrianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Muir, and Walt Whitman. Critics have long recognized her talent and have awarded her with The Pulitzer Prize, The Lannan Literary Award and the National Book Award. Now, at age 78, her poems have become more self-reflective.  She writes of the natural world as she stands in awe of its grandeur. She writes of loss and commemorates those she loved--not least of whom was her dog, Percy.

The First Time Percy Came Back

The first time Percy came back
he was not sailing on a cloud.
He was loping along the sand as though
he had come a great way.
"Percy," I cried out, and reached to him--
      those white curls--
but he was unreachable. As music 
is present yet you can't touch it.
"Yes, it's all different," he said.
"You're going to be very surprised."
But I wasn't thinking of that. I only 
wanted to hold him. "Listen," he said,
"I miss that too.
And now you'll be telling stories 
      of my coming back
and they won't be false, and they won't be true,
but they'll be real."
And then, as he used to, he said, "Let's go!"
And we walked down the beach together.

April is the National Poetry Month.  Check out one of Mary Oliver's collections and experience her eloquence as she describes the joy and pain of being human.

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The Age of Miracles

“We didn’t notice right away.  We couldn’t feel it.”

“We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin.”

“We were distracted back then by weather and war.  We had no interest in the turning of the earth.”

 So begins Karen Thompson Walker’s dystopian novel.

Here is how it ends (and this is not a spoiler.)

“We dipped our fingers in the wet cement, and we wrote the truest, simplest things we knew -  our names, the date, and these words: We were here.”

The story is told from the point of view of a young woman, the central character, Julia.  It is a coming of age novel, but coming of age under very unusual circumstances.  Julia experiences family life, friendship, school, falling in love – all as the rotation of the earth slows on its axis.  As the book jacket tells us, she adjusts to a new normal.

The Age of Miracles is Karen Thompson Walker’s first novel.  It is well conceived and well told in numerous ways – from the interior point of view of 12 year old Julia, from the description of life in Southern California, and from the perspective of a changing world.  It echoes works in many genres.  Specific reference is made to the Ray Bradbury story “All Summer in a Day”.  I was reminded of the recent novel by Hilary Jordan,  When She Woke.  It deals with many topical themes – politics, the environment, science, the fate of humanity.  The focus is on the beauties of life and relationships and how they remain, while the world changes entirely.

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River of Darkness

Set in England at the end of the first world war, this layered mystery does not disappoint. Inspector Madden and Billy Styles are sent to investigate the massacre of a family in their home. Everyone is dead except for a little girl who escaped and hid and is now too traumatized to speak. She can only draw pictures of what looks like a balloon with eyes.

Madden, back in the police department since his military discharge, is carrying his own demons - memoirs of the horrors he witnessed during the war, plus the deaths of his own wife and young child before he enlisted. His interactions with the town's doctor seem to involve more than her care and concern for the traumatized girl. Billy Styles is new to the CID and surprised he's been assigned to the case. He is watching and learning. He's also a better police investigator than he thinks he is.

The story drips out the background of the main characters - layering information and keeping the story line tight. The murderer is identified before the story's end, but the suspense level remains high. Why does he keep doing this and what is he planning next?

Well written, this book is one of a series that I recommend.

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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

After reading This Is How You Lose Her, the latest book by Pulitzer Prize winner, Junot Diaz, I was hooked on his innovative writing style and unusual characters. His earlier book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is equally stylistic. Yunior, who appears in inter-linking stories in This Is How You Lose Her, is the narrator of the earlier novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. When not the narrator, Yunior is the sex-obsessed Rutgers roommate of Oscar--a roommate who is a foil for Diaz's anti-hero. Whereas Yunior is confident, cocky, and highly macho, Oscar is an overweight and depressed nerd, completely immersed in comic books and fantasy novels. He compulsively writes in his journals. He has no friends and is constantly bullied in the college cafeteria. When not living in the world of Tolkien, Oscar falls in love with unsuitable and unattainable women, ultimately putting himself in harm's way. Is this Oscar's death wish or is he simply a foolish romantic who cannot tell fiction from reality?
Like Oscar, Yunior is a writer. And like the character in This Is How You Lose Her, he is the same womanizer who cannot be true to the woman he really loves. Only in dreams is he able to reveal his feelings.


Before all hope died I used to have this stupid dream that shit could be saved, that we would be in bed together like the old times, with the fan on, the smoke from our weed drifting above us, and I'd finally try to say works that could have saved us.


__________ __________ ____________.


But before I can shape the vowels I wake up.  My face is wet, and that's how you know it's never going to come true.


Never, ever. (p. 327)

The Brief Life of Oscar Wao is far more than the adventures of a maladroit teenager.   The story of Beli, Oscar's mother, is a tragic immigrant tale. It interweaves the brutal history of 1940s and 1950s Dominican Republic under the notorious dictator Rafael Trujillo, all the while, painting a picture of a colorful and strong woman whose hard life ultimately embitters her.

If you love adventurous writing and unusual characters, Juno Diaz is an author to read, discuss, and enjoy.


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