Saurabh's review
Drown
by Junot Díaz
Saurabh's review
Drown by Junot Díaz
Saurabh's review
rating:
I got this from the library after reading Diaz's short story Alma in the New Yorker which I absolutely loved.
I liked two stories in Drown: Ysrael where the narrator and his brother conspire to unmask the kid with no face, and Aurora, a gritty and depressing account of the drug dealing narrator's love for a crack whore. Aurora's narrator reappears in Drown, which I didnt like at all. The gay context comes across in a shamelessly manipulative "homosexuality sells" kind of manner. The kid with no face also reappears in a short story from his pov - that's quite good but the connectedness yet lack of continuity bothered me (pretty much throughout the book).
The bigger problem with Diaz's writing here I felt was that it was sparse and Chekhovian and that needs really interesting characters and/or really brutal circumstances/events. Here it's the case only with Ysrael an...more
I liked two stories in Drown: Ysrael where the narrator and his brother conspire to unmask the kid with no face, and Aurora, a gritty and depressing account of the drug dealing narrator's love for a crack whore. Aurora's narrator reappears in Drown, which I didnt like at all. The gay context comes across in a shamelessly manipulative "homosexuality sells" kind of manner. The kid with no face also reappears in a short story from his pov - that's quite good but the connectedness yet lack of continuity bothered me (pretty much throughout the book).
The bigger problem with Diaz's writing here I felt was that it was sparse and Chekhovian and that needs really interesting characters and/or really brutal circumstances/events. Here it's the case only with Ysrael an...more
