The Cheater's Guide to Love

by Junot Díaz

 Another Junot Díaz story so soon after the last one?  That works for me.  Díaz has never been a particularly prolific writer - there was a gap of eleven years between his first collection of short stories, Drown, and his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, so seeing him up his output in the lead-up to his new collection, This Is How You Lose Her's release, makes me happy.


In 'The Cheater's Guide of Love', Díaz's narrator (when they are all named Yunior, are we to assume that it's always the same guy, or are these different characters?) is suffering from a break-up.  The dissolution of his longest and best relationship really is his own fault - his fiancee discovers proof that he's had about fifty sucias over the six years of their relationship.


The story runs through the first five years after the break-up, as Yunior goes through bout after bout of depression, becomes an obsessive runner, and then a yoga fanatic when an injury puts an end to his running.  His weight fluctuates, as do the quality of the relationships he begins with other women.  The only constant in his life is the loyalty of his friend Elvis.


As is usual with a Díaz story, there is an abundance of Dominican slang and permanently adolescent men.  His stories are always very entertaining, and this one is no different.

Monstro

by Junot Díaz

 Junot Díaz has made a name for himself by writing perceptive stories about characters that have a certain geekiness to them (such as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), but before writing this story, he'd stayed away from genre writing.

Monstro is a science fiction horror story, set in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the near future.  It is narrated by Dominican-American student at Brown, who has returned to the DR with his ill mother for the summer.  Bored, he starts hanging out with Alex, a school-mate who lives a privileged life in both countries.  Alex has a large circle, including the girl Mysty, who utterly captivates our narrator, who is not used to travelling in such circles.  They spend their summer hanging out and partying, and the narrator steadily works his way closer to the aloof and difficult Mysty, who has no interest in him.

While this is going on, a strange new disease breaks out in Haiti.  People have a strange, fungus-like substance growing on them, and they begin to merge into one another.  They also linger endlessly in a near-death state, and regularly let out a loud wail in unison.  No one knows what the disease is, and Díaz keeps returning to it and its progress while still keeping the focus on our narrator.  Eventually, other, stranger things begin happening in Haiti, leading to violence, and the eventual intervention of outside military forces.

Basically, this is an 'end of the world' story, and a tale of unrequited love, combined with Díaz's own brand of Spanish and futuristic slang.  It's endlessly readable, and whets my appetite for a new Díaz novel.

The Pura Principle

by Junot Díaz

I've been a fan of Díaz's writing since I read Drown the year it came out (I don't remember when that is, but it must have been more than ten years ago). His Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was one of my favourite books of the last couple of years. And so, I saw it as quite a treat when I saw that he had a story in this issue of the New Yorker.

Once again, his fiction is narrated by a character named Yunior, who is more of an observer in his surroundings than a willing participant. Yunior's brother, Rafa, is one of those stereotypical tough New York Domincan guys; he bounces from girl to girl, fights, deals, and frequently disobeys his adoring mother. Rafa is all of this, but he also has cancer, and is having a hard time holding on to his status in the wake of chemo treatments.

His mother continues to devote her life to him, her only pleasure or outlet being her Bible group, who Junior refers to as the Four Horseheads of the Apocalypse. As Rafa tries to speed up his recovery, he gets a short-lived job at the Yarn Barn, where he meets Pura, a Dominican illegal with a young son, who Rafa's mother emphatically does not life.

What follows is a tight little domestic drama, told in Díaz's usual sharp prose, with a liberal sprinkling of Spanish phrases and expressions. Díaz keeps control of his pop culture references here - Junior is not half the geek that Oscar Wao was - but still delivers with some very nice observations and figures of speech. I hope this story signals the arrival of another novel soon.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Diaz

This is a good book. Diaz tells the story of Oscar, an over-weight Dominican nerd who grows up in Paterson New Jersey falling in love with just about every girl he sees, but never getting any affection (or anything else) in return. He sees himself as the Dominican Tolkien, and can't quite understand why explaining that to girls he approaches on the bus isn't getting him any action. We follow poor, doomed Oscar through his life, which is indeed brief and wondrous.

The book also tells the story of Oscar's family, and the fuku, or curse, that has been haunting them for generations. We learn about his sister, who falls afoul of their commanding and domineering mother. We learn about his mother, and how she became such a strong person in the first place. We even peer back to Oscar's grandfather, and his experiences with the Trujillo regime, which is believed to be the root of the fuku. Finally, we learn a great deal about the Dominican itself, especially through the footnotes that take us on some tangential journeys through Caribbean dictatorship.

Diaz writes in a very refreshing style. The book is narrated by a character that I suspect is his idealized version of himself, and as such is told in modern voice that incorporates street slang and a plethora of references to comics, fantasy, and science fiction, many of which were out of my frame of reference. The book flows nicely, and at times is nearly impossible to put down.