041: This Is How You Lose Her

This Is How You Lose Her 4/5

It seems that in the modern world successful storytelling has to come as part of a planned, or at least the intention, or a three or more part series. While this may not be true of quote unquote literature, it has become relatively standard fare for sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and of course the ubiquitous teen fiction. All of this seems to be slowly eradicating the world of stories that simply happen to fall into the same universe a la Tom Clancy’s novels or Terry Pratchet’s Discworld series. Now it seems everything has to be Part One, Part Two, Part Three etc, demanding dogmatic adherence to progressing a singular story line with a static main character and a relatively constant supporting cast. Don’t take this to mean that all serialized fiction is terrible (it’s not), and it has done great things especially in the realm of increasing readership amongst young people. So maybe all of this is why I liked Junot Diaz’s newest book so much.