With ten stories that move from the barrios of the Dominican Republic to the struggling urban communities of New Jersey, Junot Diaz makes his remarkable debut. Diaz's work is unflinching and strong, and these stories crackle with an electric sense of discovery. Diaz evokes a world in which fathers are gone, mothers fight with grim determination for their families and themselves, and the next generation inherits the casual cruelty, devestating ambivalence, and knowing humor of lives circumscribed by poverty and uncertainty. In Drown, Diaz has harnessed the rhythms of anger and release, frustration and joy, to indelible effect.
A book group choice that I really struggled to read. I just found it completely strange and pointless. Although, I think I just missed the point of it. It was written as a number of, supposed, short stories that you realised were all interlinked in some way.
I don't like short stories and even with the links between them, I just could not relax and enjoy this book.
At first I thought it was cute and relevant that the author had left in a number of Spanish phrases throughout each chapter and I enjoyed looking them up on my translator application on my phone. This became tiresome after a while as the Spanish kept on coming and some of the translations came back making no sense. I gave up trying to translate in the end and just made up in my mind what the Spanish was supposed to mean and , to be honest, I didn't really care st this point whether I was right or not.
I am looking forward to having a discussion at book group to see ow much I have missed the point of this book. I can almost guess which of the members will rave about it and which will probably have the same opinion as me.
1 out of 5 as I got no enjoyment whatsoever from reading this book.
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