A Review: This is How You Lose Her

Title of Work: This is How You Lose Her
Author: Junot Díaz
Dates Read: January 23-25, 2023
Format: Audio, read by author

Posted: Goodreads, January 25th, 2023
Rating: 4/5
Review:

A scathing obituary for machismo; a rumination on love lost, lovers shattered by unchecked impulse and indulgence.

Paternal and fraternal models hammer out bent and hardened shapes from innocent ingots held preciously to the breasts of mothers in the beginning. Sometimes women enable the masculine destructiveness through their love, through their hopefulness that he will be different just as he promised. This is not a judgment or an allocation of blame. Men consume what women grow from that place of love, taking in gluttony and often not giving enough back. The vine withers. Why do so many men walk this earth incomplete and damaged? Were we not taught how to be? Perhaps it’s not a lack of teaching but a lack of accountability that perpetually robs both halves of the pure companionship that is surely within reach.