This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a few years ago.  It had won the Pulitzer Prize after all and I loved its fresh, edgy voice.  I like to mix my reading list up so I felt it was time to read another Junot Diaz novel, spice things up a bit.

The first page of This is How You Lose Her sucked me right in.  Diaz's writing is fast, snappy, sexy and neurotic.  Yunior is a young, Dominican trying to find his way even though the whole world seems to be against him.  He constantly chases the girls searching for something lasting and is never able to find it.  He's a smart kid with a good brain but thinking with the wrong brain overrules everything else in his life. Circling in the background is his over protective mother and a dying brother. 

Yunior's fast and furious antics kept me on the edge of my seat. For awhile.  After the read 'o meter on my Kindle passed 50%, I prayed for Yunior to find a girl so the story could be over with.  Too much of the same thing over and over began to bore me.  The heart racing pace of the writing got to be too much for me to take.  I wanted a break.

At the end of the story, I breathed a sigh of relief. Yunior's tales had come to an end and I could move on to something more calming and relaxing.  Since I do most of my reading in bed, I also needed a good night's sleep.  Spicing things up is not always exciting as it may seem.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Oscar Wao was a book that went missing from my collection after we moved two years ago.  About six months ago the book was found, miraculously in a box in the corner of a closet. I didn't realize until I pulled it off the shelf that it had won the Pulitzer Prize.  I imagined that the story was worth waiting for.

I was prepared for all the Spanish.  My sister had warned me after she'd heard Junot Diaz speak in Cleveland.  I've taken some Spanish classes over the years when I lived in South Florida where English often takes a back seat.  I can't speak Spanish but I can figure out most of it on the written page. Or so I thought.

After reading the first ten pages I was ready to quit.  The story is loaded with Spanish slang.  I had difficulty following.  And the footnotes!  Sometimes half the page was a footnote written in tiny print.  I didn't know if I should read it or not.  Mostly I didn't.  I kept going though since I'm always afraid I'm going to miss some brilliance that will make me a better writer.   In this case I'm ecstatic that tenacious streak inside kept me reading.

Oscar Wao is a nerdy, bookworm, sci-fi crazed, fat Dominican who is desperate to get laid.  He's being raised alongside his sister by a wild and crazy single mother.  The family is followed by the curse, the fuku and have been for generations.  There were so many good things about Oscar and his family, I found it impossible not to fall in love with all of them.  Pain and misery followed them everywhere, yet they never gave in to the fuku.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is one wild ride that is well worth the trip.  No wonder it won the Pulitzer Prize.  The book is all I  imagined and well worth the wait. It's brilliant. 

Mystery Solved

Two years ago, in January when the whole world seemed to be on the brink of disaster, Richard and I leaped over the falls to start our new wondrous life.  We packed up all our belongings and moved to our new home 150 miles north where we knew no one.  Based on our life prior to this time, it looked like a very impulsive action on our part.  We're planners, leaving nothing to chance if we can help it.  Yet here we were all alone in a strange new town.

We've faced many rough spots in two years, owning 2 homes when the sale of our old house fell through at the last minute, not being able to find a good job before finally realizing that $10 an hour is a pretty decent job in this new economy and battling the alcohol that made the unknown seemingly bearable.  All these challenges have been resolved so that I'm now in a place of peace, love and harmony.

But there was one little thing that's been gnawing at me.  When I inventoried my unread books, two were missing.  For two years I've been searching for them finally deciding that when I left Richard alone for a week to unpack after our move, he'd thrown them out with the trash.  Every time I went to the bookstore I looked for these titles trying to resist the urge to purchase them again.  I highlighted them in orange on my book log so I'd never forget them.  I knew they had to be here somewhere but had given up hope.

Richard has been doing the spring cleaning.  Today he was cleaning out the closets, tossing out all the stuff we don't need.  I took Ginger for a walk since she's afraid of the vacuum.  It's always quite an ordeal when the vacuum is running.  On our return a pile of junk greeted my on my desk.  And there they were.  The books I couldn't forget about.  The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. I screamed with delight.  

I have less than 100 pages left to read in my current selection and then I'll start these two.  This is their time, I'm certain of it.  They've magically reappeared for a reason.  I've leaped over the falls into a new wondrous life to learn something new about myself through my books.