Junot Diaz came to read at the college where I work a few months back, and though I hadn't yet read anything of his, I went. I wanted to see what he was all about, and it seemed like a good opportunity. I bought this book, got in line early, and started reading. I started reading and I cried and cried and cried. I didn't get far before his reading, but with even just part of one story, he kind of destroyed me. I heard him read, and he was honest, hysterical, well-spoken, and full of swear words, so needless to say he charmed the fuck out of me. I met him and told him that I cried while reading and that I'd dated dudes like this, and he thanked me and hugged me and signed my copy and it was one of those moments where I felt connected to someone through their work in an incredible way. I think this is partly why I put off reading this for awhile after then. I knew it would hit all those notes, and I wanted to be in a place where I felt ready.

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I do think certain people are inclined to cheat - and I also think there are certain people who are inclined to date those people. This isn't to say that neither type of person can't change. I only say this because I was once the kind of person who had a penchant for dating cheaters. I'm well grown-up past that now, thank the lords, but there was certainly a time where I just ended up with a certain kind of guy. (I'm also not saying it's a gender-based thing, to be clear.)

A good deal of This Is How You Lose Her is centered around infidelity, and having the life experiences that I have, that's partially why these stories gutted me so much. I'd been there, or if not exactly there, somewhere in the same neighborhood. Diaz has a remarkable talent for hitting the emotional center head on and making the reader feel exactly what we need to - the universality of unrequited love, of having trust broken, of fighting to make something work when it's well past dead.

That said, This Is How You Lose Her hits on much more than infidelity, while dealing with similar themes of isolation, loneliness, otherness... cancer, immigration, loss of family, loss of culture, loss of identity, loss of direction.

One of the incredible things about this book, though, is that it doesn't feel like a particularly sad or depressing read, even though it deals with such heavy topics. It's actually strangely comforting because it touches on these difficult truths in such a way that exposes the frequency of our experiences with loneliness, and thus makes us feel less alone through this commonality.

Diaz has a wonderful, unique voice - a distinct rhythm, flow, dialect. As someone who doesn't know a lick of Spanish, I was sometimes consulting Google to translate some of the slang he uses, and generally found that I was actually understanding it somehow - usually the words were slang for exactly what I thought they were, and that's definitely not for any other reason than Diaz's incredible writing.

This definitely feels like a work that will stay with me. I'm not entirely sure what's driving me to rate this at four instead of five, except for possibly the fact that it felt like it went so quickly and I wanted more... But, you know how that old cliche about that goes....

Edit, September 8th, 2014: It's official. It's getting the fifth star.