(2 of 2)
And "Invierno" returns to childhood as Yunior and his brother, newly arrived in wintry New Jersey from Santo Domingo, come to terms not only with their sense of claustrophobic displacement but also with their father's gradual fade-out. In the final scene, members of the shrunken family wander down to the landfill at the edge of their apartment complex, gazing over a landscape both infernal and uncannily peaceful: "Rubbish fires burned all over it like sores and the dump trucks and bulldozers slept quietly and reverently at its base." Surely most Díaz fans are hungry for his next Wao-ian feat of novel-writing, but for now, this is how he'll keep us.