This Is How You Lose Her

　　我想我失去她是有原因的。
　　或許是因為不愛，或許是因為太愛，
　　或許是其他等到太遲我才說出口的話……

　　我不是負心漢。我知道這話聽起來就像打死不認帳，可是事實就是這樣。我跟大家都一樣：個性軟弱，老出紕漏，但本性不壞。我就不一一報告她發現我偷吃的經過了，不就是苦苦哀求、跪地求饒、一把鼻涕一把眼淚那些老套。我試過各種方法留住她：寫信給她、開車載她去上班、寫群組信跟以前的美眉斷絕往來、換電話號碼、戒酒、戒菸、怪我老爸、怪我老媽。我砍了臉書帳號，我把所有信箱的密碼交給她。什麼方法都試了，直到有一天她在床上坐起來說：你有完沒完！

　　分手之後我變得陰晴不定。前一分鐘差點殺去找她，下一分鐘又打給某個美眉求愛。我情緒失控，聽到她喜歡的歌必哭。我一直在等待再也不會想起她的那一刻到來。但是沒有。我問過認識的所有人，通常這種事要多久才會好。各式各樣的公式都有。也有人說那完全是意志力的問題，你認為好了就好了。但我從來沒覺得「好」。接下來幾年我埋頭工作，感覺就像一絲希望，因為我心裡明白：有時候，重新開始是我們唯一的機會。

　　這本小說道盡人們渴望愛又焦慮不可得的心情。全書由九段愛的故事串起，主角尤尼爾，或多或少帶有作者狄亞茲半自傳的色彩：典型的中南美洲移民、出身貧困、書呆子兼科幻迷，有個身患癌症的哥哥，還有一個拋家棄子的父親。可以預見尤尼爾的求愛之路有多坎坷。

　　透過狄亞茲強烈的筆觸，尤尼爾的心被摧殘得千瘡百孔，他對出軌毫不在乎，卻又無法忍受失去女友；他滿腦子性，卻又相信真愛無敵；他看不起他不負責任的老爸和風流成性的老哥，結果發現原來自己跟他們一個樣！

　　這些故事同樣反映出各種女性的悲哀：有著成熟女性魅力，但心智單純的傻大姐，遇上一個個只要性不要愛的男友；帶著自己的枕頭和煎鍋到男友家過夜的痴情女；在醫院工作的強悍小三，相信感情等久了就是她的；一個不想放手但也不想受傷的傻女孩，只能安慰自己「我愛你，管他值不值得」。

　　Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Diaz’s first book, Drown, established him as a major new writer with “the dispassionate eye of a journalist and the tongue of a poet” (Newsweek). His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was named #1 Fiction Book of the Year” by Time magazine and spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, establishing itself – with more than a million copies in print – as a modern classic. In addition to the Pulitzer, Diaz has won a host of major awards and prizes, including the National Book Critic’s Circle Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/O. Henry Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award.
 
　　Now Diaz turns his remarkable talent to the haunting, impossible power of love – obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love. On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness--and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican men are cheaters; and the love of his life, whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his own. In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”

　　★本書中譯版《你就這樣失去了她》由商周出版。

作者簡介

朱諾．狄亞茲Junot Diaz

　　出生於多明尼加共和國，在美國紐澤西長大。處女作《溺斃》（Drown）大獲好評，不僅攀上暢銷書榜，也獲得國際筆會的「PEN╱瑪拉默獎」；第二本著作《貧窮窟宅男的世界末日》橫掃全美三十五個年度書獎，榮獲二○○八年普立茲獎及美國國家書評人獎；第三本著作《你就是這樣失去了她》一出版就登上紐約時報暢銷榜並進入美國國家圖書獎決選名單。狄亞茲獲獎無數，寫作功力屢獲肯定，包括麥克亞瑟天才獎、國際筆會短篇小說獎、戴頓文學和平獎、古根漢獎等等。他畢業於羅格斯紐澤西州立大學，目前是《波士頓評論》的小說類編輯及麻省理工學院的文學創作教授。

　　Junot Diaz is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize and was named Time's #1 Fiction Book of 2007. He is the recipient of a PEN/Malamud Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.  Born in Santo Domingo, Diaz is a professor at MIT.