This Is How You Lose Her

Okay, we didn't work, and all
memories to tell you the truth aren't good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep
beside me and never dreamed afraid.

There should be stars for great wars
like ours.

- Sandra Cisneros

I'm currently reading This Is How You Lose Her, a collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, which opens with the poem above. This might be the only time in my life I've been compelled to pay the full hardcover price of $26.95 for a not-long book of short stories, which are not normally my bag. But something about this book kept screaming at me when I wandered in and out of bookstores, which I do a lot. There are enough tiny, perfect, dusty bookstores throughout the hazy streets of the West Village to keep me occupied for probably another seven years of work lunch breaks before I get bored of that neighborhood.

I've only read two of the stories, and so far it's safe to say I'm both enchanted and appalled - which is absolutely correct. The stories all feature the point of view of one man, serial cheating and somewhat hapless Yunior, an immigrant who grows up in a working class Dominican neighborhood in central New Jersey. It's odd to read a book in which someone loiters around Woodbridge Mall, but hey, it's also sort of grounding.

There is a lot to learn from the sparseness of this author's style. To achieve moments of wonder, you don't need to overwrite. You can be short, abrupt. You can tell the stories of a boy, later a man, growing up in a rough neighborhood with a rough family, with the spectre of a rough future pounding down on him, and still find a way to weave in beauty and insight. Without forcing it down the reader's throat. In fact, the beauty is that much more outstanding because of the contrast between the characters, who are ugly and real and full of hard edges, and the rare, fluid moments of clarity they still find. Just like real people do.

Write a paragraph like this and I'm yours forever.

"That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads. Girls were starting to take notice of me; I wasn't good-looking but I listened and had boxing muscles in my arms. In another universe I probably came out ok, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead."

Also, this:

"Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known. 

Remember the day we met? she asks.
I nod.
You wanted to play baseball.
It was summer, I say. You were wearing a tank top. 
You made me put on a shirt before you'd let me be on your team. Do you remember?
I remember, I say. 

We never spoke again. A couple of years later I went away to college and I don't know where the fuck she went."

...oof. Also, yes. Absolutely, totally yes.