THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER: THE CHEATER’S GUIDE TO LOVE (BOOK REVIEW)

You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda.  You compose a mass email disowning all your side chicks. You block their emails. You change your phone number. You stop smoking. You stop drinking. You claim you’re a sex addict and start attending meetings. You blame your father. You blame your mother. You blame the patriarchy. You blame Santo Domingo. You find a therapist. You cancel your facebook. You give her the passwords to all your email accounts. You start taking salsa classes like you always swore you would so that the two of you could dance together. You claim you were weak. You claim you were sick. It was the book! It was the pressure! And every hour like clockwork you say that you’re so sorry. You try it all, but one day she will simply sit up in bed and say, NO MORE ~ Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

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This Is How You Lose Her follows Yunior, a Dominican Man who struggles with the plight of his entire family. His father, being a chronic cheater, his brother who inhabited his father’s unfaithful ways, and later died of Cancer, and her mother who is forever tending the grief for a lost son and a husband who was never essentially present throughout their marriage.

    

Yunior would go about each day keenly observing the ins and outs of the everyday lives of each members of the household and would do his part in keeping the family together even at a tender age. He despised the particular infidelity gene that both his father and brother shares, and utterly wish to be spared of the same gene. Later on when his mother ended the marriage and his brother finally succumbed to cancer, what he feared the most seemed to always be just within his core, waiting for an awakening—He, himself is a pathological cheater.

    

The bouts of Yunior’s cheating progressively continued even with a six year relationship with a woman he already popped the question. The love is certainly out of question. Whether it’s a man’s human nature to prey on other women while on a relationship or an overdrive he can’t box to a minimum. He just keeps doing what he knows is wrong, until the forebodings came true. His fiancèe discovered his cheating activities. He genuinely tried to make it up to her with everything he can. She gave her the benefit of the doubt, and for a month she tried and hoped to see the change in his ways, but a broken trust and a broken heart is too blinding that even the most genuine changed man won’t be able to shed light. She finally put the relationship to a halt. And he would be eternally regretting losing the only woman he ever truly loved because of his cheating hands. 

    

Junot Diaz, wrote the entire novel with a sense of relatability in his own unique language. He incorporated potent humor, passion, family drama, sex and love in this book that intensifies the narrative to capture the readers. Further shedding light to the regrets and long-term ordeal of moving on of a cheating man truly sorry of his bad ways, in the character of Yunior. The plot orbits different characters we always seem to encounter in plain sight and experiences that hit close to home. Junot Diaz, occassionally utilizing the spanish language is too clever an idea you can almost hear the accent of the character speaking it. This was written in all new different ways it’s a breath of fresh air from our usual reads. Also, this is practically written for cheaters in hopes that this might do wonders in their cheating hearts.

    

NOTABLE EXCERPTS: THE REGRETS OF A CHRONIC CHEATER

    

“All I ever managed was a memory of the first time Magda and I talked, and that’s when I know it’s over, as soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.”

    

“And you asked everyone you know.

’How long does it usually take to get over it?’ ‘As you soon as you decide it’s over, it’s over’ But you never get over her”

    

“You phone her everyday and leave her messages which she doesn’t answer. You write her long sensitive letters which she returns unopened.”

    

“At first you pretend it don’t matter. You harbored a lot of grievances against her anyways. She didn’t give good head, you hated the fuzz on her cheeks, she never waxed her pussy. She never cleaned up around the apartment etc. For a few weeks you almost believe it. You go back to smoking, to drinking. You drop the therapist and the sex addict groups and you run around with the sluts like it’s the good old days. Like nothing has happened. You say you’re okay. Except you’re not.”

    

“You’re feeling terribly guilty and terribly alone. You keep writing letters to her, waiting for that day you can hand them to her”

    

“Your little letters become more and more pathetic. PLEASE. You write, PLEASE COME BACK. You have dreams where she’s talking to you like in the old days. And then you wake up” 

    

“You stop sleeping and some night when you’re drunk and alone you have the wacky impulse to open the window of yoir fifth floor apartment and leap down to the street. But, (a) you ain’t the killing-yourself type. (b) your boy Elvis keeps a strong eye on you. (c) you have this ridiculous hope that maybe one day she will forgive you. She doesn’t.”

    

“Find yourself another girl, your friend advises. Nothing. Nothing. You reply. No one will ever be like her.”