Location:  Home» Kindle eBooks » United States » Drown  

Drown

Drown

enlarge enlarge 
Author: Junot Diaz
Publisher: Riverhead
Category: EBooks

List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $4.01 (29%)

Buy

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars 79 reviews
Sales Rank: 1547

Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1

Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54

Publication Date: May 16, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Similar Items:

  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  • Tree of Smoke
  • Out Stealing Horses
  • Brother, I'm Dying

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
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.

Product Description
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.


Customer Reviews:   Read 74 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars Diaz Writes With Memorable Voice   October 16, 2008
J. Brummer
Junot Diaz has accomplished something rare in this collection of short stories: he's created an authentic voice for a cast of characters we desperately need to hear from but have previously been silent. More impressive, he does so without the cheap cynicism or affected posturing which characterizes so much "cutting edge" writing. He writes with sincerity, even pathos, while his unforgettable stories cut straight to the bone.


2 out of 5 stars a Bukowski rip-off   September 29, 2008
Jonathan Milstein (Falls Church, VA)
I read Drown and liked it. And then I read Bukowski's Ham on Rye. Man... Diaz is a thief.


4 out of 5 stars Quick easy read...   September 24, 2008
Peter R. Smith (USA)
I wasn't sure what to expect when I ordered this book and was pleasantly surprised by it. Being a "Dominicanphile" I felt it brought much insight from a Dominican's perspective. A very easy and enjoyable read. I finished hoping for more.


4 out of 5 stars If you grew up on the streets, you might find some of these stories redundant   August 30, 2008
JackOfMostTrades (Washington, DC)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Junot Diaz is a good writer. Reading these stories is better than watching some dumb TV show depicting growing up the hard way. But for those of us who did grow up poor or with single mothers or with a bunch of deliquent friends, I just don't see this book as something to celebrate. Could it be that 'literary readers' are all from the middle class and find depiction of street life revelatory? I had the same experiences growing up on the streets of Brooklyn and didn't find the expression or situations in these stories much different than what one of my friends and I might talk about during our formative years--to whit xyz jumped off the roof last night, or zyx overdosed on heroin. I don't see the fascination about a world where these events are routine. For those who read this book to get an insight into how the 'other half' lives, I suggest going out and living that life for a while. This book might be good ethnography, but it's not great literature. I wonder if the people who run M.F.A. programs go scouring for writers who have experiences like the author's since it's such a departure from their own world. This way of idealizing this sort of material reminds me of the appeal of the photography of Diane Arbus. Her images are fascinating for the 'normal' middle class experience, but if you grew up with the people whom she depicts--like I did--you probably know uneducated, marginal, struggling people are not all that fascinating. BTW, it's odd how the English version of these stories, Drown, was translated into Spanish by someone other than the author, an named 'Negocios'--from a different short story title in the collection. That Junot Diaz doesn't translate his own work that was originally written in English is kind of odd.


3 out of 5 stars Good but NOT Great   August 21, 2008
Missy (Gaithersburg, MD)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

In my opinion Junot Diaz is a good writer. I found the book to be a good read, but NOT a great read. I was expecting so much more. I feel that so many main parts were left out, like how did they finally get to the states? It jumped back and forth too much. However, there were a lot of funny and interesting parts in the book. My favorite chapter was Drown.

The easiest way to build a complete Amazon Affiliate Store.