Reviews

Drown by Junot Díaz

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hchorey's review

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A collection of gritty short stories about young Dominican men's experiences coming of age in both the Dominican Republic, New Jersey and New York. The tales' immigrant experiences include absent fathers, drug-use, interracial dating, and shoplifting.

Diaz's voice is passionate and captivating. I will definitely be checking out his recently released novel.

mrbear's review

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3.0

I liked this book slightly more than his other book, mostly because I thought the short story format was better for the story he was trying to convey. I still found that his writing style was a little bit over dramatized and occasionally the stories were frustrating to read. Again, I'd recommend it to people who speak spanish more than I would to people who don't, though he uses less "spanish at critical moments" in this book than he does in Oscar Wao.

alex_watkins's review

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4.0

After really loving his Pulitzer prize winning follow-up, I went to read this one. There are some great stories in here, and just like most short story collections some weaker ones. I think my main complaint was that it didn't have the twist on the immigrant story that Wao has. I could never tell if the stories were all following the same people or not, most were variations on the immigrant theme. My favorite story was the titular Drown which did twist up the story in a surprising way, or at least surprising if you don't know what pato means and have to look it up halfway through the story after realizing its important.