The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Paperback) by Junot Díaz

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06/17/08

Cameron rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Read in September, 2007

How this book won the Pulitzer Prize AND the National Book Critics Circle is beyond me. It's terrible. Here's the review I wrote when it came out. I stand by this completely. If someone says they read this and liked it, punch them in the throat. (I'm kidding, naturally.)

Review of Junot Diaz’s first novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” published Oct. 7, 2007
Imagine, if you will, that seven years after publishing "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,"...more

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04/10/08

David rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Meet Oscar de Leon, dubbed "Oscar Wao" by bullies who liken him to the foppish Oscar Wilde. Our Oscar is a fat, virginal Dominican-American teenager who carries a Planet of the Apes lunchbox to school, spends hours painting his Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, and who knows "more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee." If Nerd was a country, Oscar would be its undisputed king. Oscar is the kind of kid—sweaty, mumbles to himself, inevitably invades personal space, probably h...more Meet Oscar de Leon, dubbed "Oscar Wao" by bullies who liken him to the foppish Oscar Wilde. Our Oscar is a fat, virginal Dominican-American teenager who carries a Planet of the Apes lunchbox to school, spends hours painting his Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, and who knows "more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee." If Nerd was a country, Oscar would be its undisputed king. Oscar is the kind of kid—sweaty, mumbles to himself, inevitably invades personal space, probably has bad breath—we would avoid on the subway.

In Junot Diaz' debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, however, Oscar is the flame and we are the moths. An earnestly open-hearted protagonist, he draws us to him until we incinerate in the intensity of his character. He's a pitiful-but-hopeful loser we can all relate to, even the Prom Kings and Queens among us (who might just be the loneliest kids in school). The last time I was this absorbed by a fictional weirdo was in 1989 when John Irving's Owen Meany forced me--FORCED, I SAY!—to read his Prayer twice in rapid, thirsty succession. Oscar held me captive in much the same way with his sweaty, sticky fingers tightly gripping my attention.

Let's return to Diaz for a moment. To use the words "Diaz" and "debut novel" in such close proximity is something of a joke. Diaz has been a middleweight figure on the literary scene for eleven years, based almost exclusively on his previous (and only) book Drown, a collection of interconnected stories which, like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, chronicled the Dominican immigrant experience with a startling freshness. If you turn to the back flap of that 1996 book, you'll read an author bio which concludes with "He lives in New York City and is at work on his first novel." That was eleven years ago. To say that Oscar Wao was much-anticipated would be an understatement.

Why the long wait? Tick off the reasons on your fingers: writer's block, the paralysis of sudden fame at a young age (Diaz was in his late 20s when the accolades started flooding in), working for years on an apocalyptic novel about the destruction of New York City which was eventually trumped by the sur-reality of 9/11, not seeing anything on the blank wall which stares back at you unblinking, you name it. Little of that matters now, except as an interesting footnote of trivia, because today we hold in our hands the solid, substantial Oscar Wao. For a first novel, it's an impressive triumph.

Now back to Oscar. As the novel's title implies, this is the chronicle of Oscar's brief, candle-flame life and charts his quest, but rarely conquest, of girls. You see, not only is Oscar a Tolkein-loving, Star Trek-quoting, Dungeons & Dragons-playing geek, he's a horny geek whose tongue hangs out and eyes bulge in cartoon cones every time a pretty girl walks by. The only trouble is, as his friend Yunior points out, "Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber." Save for one incredibly happy encounter late in his life, Oscar's lust is unrequited, but he takes this as a matter of course because he believes his family is living under the cloud of an Old-World curse called fuku, brought to our shores, he believes, by Columbus.

Despite wearing the family doom like a black, itchy sweater and meeting romantic rejection at every turn, Oscar optimistically journeys through the 1970s, "the dawn of the Nerd Age," Diaz writes. It's Oscar against the world and he glumly accepts his lot in life. "Everybody," he says at one point, "misapprehends me." As he grows older and retreats from his peers into the world of Lovecraft, Doc Savage, Asimov, Heinlein and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Oscar begins to think his destiny is to be "the Dominican Tolkein." He spends countless hours holed up in his room writing science-fiction and fantasy tales. If Diaz had allowed, Oscar probably would have spent eleven years working on his masterpiece; but, as we're always reminded, this is a brief life. Oscar tries to make the most of it, even with the fuku hanging over his head.

The novel is more than just a Nerd Epic, however. Diaz pulls out all the stops in an attempt to tell a all-encompassing story of immigration and assimilation. Oscar lives with his mother and sister in the ghetto of Paterson, New Jersey, and the novel is as much their story as it is his. We're just starting to groove with sympathy for fat little Oscar when Diaz suddenly shifts gears and takes us into the world of Lola, Oscar's beautiful, athletic sister who has a stormy relationship with their mother, Belicia, a "hardnosed no-nonsense femme-matador." Then, before too many more pages have elapsed, we're deep in that woman's story, in a long section of the book called "The Three Heartbreaks of Belicia Cabral," where we learn what happened to her back in the Dominican Republic to make her so bitterly protective of her children. These chapters, along with the rest of the book for that matter, really are filled with heartbreak, a transmogrification of fuku that shapes the course of everything to come, from Oscar's obsession with Shazam to Lola's runaway teen saga.

Diaz also proves to be something of a risk-taker. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao bravely assumes there is an audience of readers who will sit through a long novel in which the English and Spanish languages mingle without the author once stopping to translate the unfamiliar words. The gist of what the Spanglish phrases mean is pretty easy to pick up, and for those readers who absolutely have to know what guapa or chuleria mean…well, an English-Spanish dictionary is as close as the internet.

Diaz also assumes his readers will come to the table with some knowledge of Dominican history, specifically the tyrannical regime of Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961 and who, if Oscar is to be believed, was master of the fuku. Trujillo who? You know, the "portly, sadistic, pig-eyed mulato who bleached his skin, wore platform shoes, and had a fondness for Napoleon-era haberdashery." If your mind is as blank as mine when it comes to the island's past, never fear: Diaz replays the highlights of Santo Domingo History 101 in footnotes which annotate the novel. Yes, footnotes. The novel is peppered with them, as any well-respecting Screed of Nerd should be. Diaz knows most of us don't know squat about Dominicans and, as in Drown, he brings us briskly into the light. (Pay attention to Trujillo, though, because he plays an important role in Oscar's destiny.)

Diaz never lets the pace lag and his sentences remain fresh and sharp throughout. One woman is described with "eczema on her hands looking like a messy meal that had set"; later, Yunior describes how it feels to be mugged: "my guts feeling like they'd been taken out of me, beaten with mallets, and then reattached with paper clips." Through his wondrous use of language, Diaz brings the book alive and makes it tremble in our hands.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an epic in the truest sense and in its fat, endearing hero's chest beats a Homeric heart. Oscar leads us through his unflagging quest for happiness, while Diaz tumbles us through a century of Dominican history and shows us how the brief life of one lonely boy can epitomize the immigrant experience. This novel was well worth the decade-long wait.(less)

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12/24/07

Andy rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Read in December, 2007

I bought Oscar Wao as a birthday gift for my mother in October based on scores of sterling reviews. She read it, gave it a mild thumbs-up (probably just being nice) and handed it off to me. Now having read it, I'm pretty mortified I thought this book would be something she might like.

The critical consensus seemed to be that Junot Diaz is a good writer, and he picked a good story to tell here in his first novel. But I found this book lacking on both counts. I found the writing lazy a...more

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09/18/08

Marie sweeney rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Read in October, 2008

I want to know all about your family, your childhood, your grandparents, their childhood, etc, etc, I want to know where you lived, what food you ate, what games you played or didn't play. I want to know why this is important to you or that is not. Which is why I LOVED this book! Junot Diaz takes 300+ pages to tell a story about a boy that wants to be kissed and the kiss MATTERS because we know his family, we know his friends, we know their superstitions and their pains, and their loses and thei...more

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07/31/08

Kim rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

bookshelves: eh, gr-friend-recommendations

Read in January, 2009

TBWLOOW would have been a ‘good read’, I honestly believe that, but I don't know… something happened along the way.

Maybe it was the fact that I started this during the holidays, and that's not fair to any book, I'm the biggest wench from November 15th to January 15th. I should limit my reading to People magazine or maybe some old Three's Company scripts... I don't know, I haven't figured out the system just yet.

Maybe it was my utter lack of knowledge about the pol...more

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07/19/08

Alfonso rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Read in September, 2008

Ok, I’m writing a review of this book right now or I’ma die trying goddamn it!
1 HOUR LATER

I got nothing! I’ve deleted like 20 paragraphs!

1 HOUR LATER!!! 2 bruises in my forehead, kind of dizzy, I’ve cursed the gods of knowledge for being born without literary talent!! And 0 review!

Oh god!!! I give up!!! This is all I got!!! This book is awesome!!! Is a nerdy dude being nerdy as hell and not getting pussy!! Even tho he desperately wants it...more

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07/07/08

Dan rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

bookshelves: never_finished

Read in July, 2008

Soon after I started reading this book, I also started reading Housekeeping vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby. In it's preface, Hornby discusses why reading has fallen by the wayside as of late. A lot of people associate reading with boredom because to most, it feels like a chore to get through novels. If people would just read what they enjoyed, then they would begin again to see the pleasures of reading and thus, do more of it (he even makes a point that someone who reads only The Economist and thei...more Soon after I started reading this book, I also started reading Housekeeping vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby. In it's preface, Hornby discusses why reading has fallen by the wayside as of late. A lot of people associate reading with boredom because to most, it feels like a chore to get through novels. If people would just read what they enjoyed, then they would begin again to see the pleasures of reading and thus, do more of it (he even makes a point that someone who reads only The Economist and their daily paper every week may in fact be reading more words than him). There's a bit of circular logic to this, of course; how are you to know if you'll enjoy a book unless you start? Along with that, you have many circles that seem to want to claim that unless reading is difficult or a challenge, then it wasn't really worth reading at all.

Which pretty much sums up all the trappings I fell into with Oscar Wao. I first became aware of it when I read an interview with Diaz on a comic book site I frequent. I recognized the book cover from work and said, "There's a comic connection in there? I should check it out!" I did, and the very first line is a quote from an old Fantastic Four comic. Flipping through at random I caught even more references, to the New Gods and Middle Earth and so on...it seemed rife with geeky references I'd get (seriously - how many of the "literatti" would know what the "Omega Effect" was?). I made a mental note to check it out later. Before you know it, this little book had won the Pulitzer. Wow, there must be more to it than just some sci-fi asides. So I finally found a good break to read it. It starts out interesting enough, despite a lengthy discussion about the Dominican Republic's dictators, and I can see Oscar is pretty likable. There is a LOT of Spanish and Spanish slang mixed throughout, but I can figure out most through context. The second section then shifts to Oscar's sister, Lola. She's afforded about equal time, albeit with less geeky references, and I stick through it here because she spends her time in Wildwood, and as I spent a lot of summers there growing up I wondered if I'd recognize anything (something else Hornby discusses in the above book, oddly enough - familiar locations as a reason to read a particular book). The next section is what did me in. Diaz decides to spend a LOT of time on the childhood and adolescence of Oscar and Lola's mother. From what I've gathered in other reviews, Diaz is apparently setting up some themes between all these family members, but at that point I couldn't care less. This was not what I signed up for, and the Spanish comes on even stronger here - I found myself skipping almost every other sentence.

I'm sure there is some beautiful dovetailing of story lines later on, but the reading became a chore, and at that point I decided to take Nick Hornby's advice on how to proceed:"Put it down. You'll never finish it. Start something else."
And there's nothing wrong with that.(less)

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09/06/08

Erin F. B. rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

bookshelves: pulitzer

Read in October, 2008

How do I start this review...ok first I will say that I recognize the literary abilities of Junot Diaz. The book is well-written; the language hypnotic in fact. This book, for all the things that bothered me, is hard to put down.

So, the one star rating is more of a reaction to the emotional upheaval this book left me with. I just can't get behind a book so completely misogynistic. And I don't know the author's intent, and I'm afraid I don't know nearly enough about Dominican hist...more How do I start this review...ok first I will say that I recognize the literary abilities of Junot Diaz. The book is well-written; the language hypnotic in fact. This book, for all the things that bothered me, is hard to put down.

So, the one star rating is more of a reaction to the emotional upheaval this book left me with. I just can't get behind a book so completely misogynistic. And I don't know the author's intent, and I'm afraid I don't know nearly enough about Dominican history as I should, but I was just left really quite devastated by it.

Women are objects in this novel. Objects for men to own, to destroy, to collect as many as they can. Almost every female character in the novel is cheated on, raped, attacked, beaten or murdered; sometimes more than once, sometimes all five. And while I understand the violence of the Dominican Republic during the time of Trujillo, I guess what pisses me off is the flippancy with which the narrator talks about it. When describing the horrific beating that Beli receives (oh yeah, the beating that kills her unborn child) he mentions that he'll spare us the actual violence and instead "report the damage inflicted" how that is sparing us the violence is beyond me. But what really gets me is when he contemplates if the attackers may have had time for "a rape or two". As if they're leaving work and might they have time for a cup of tea or two before they have to get home.

Women are called cheap, whores, bitches, sluts and all their Spanish counterparts. Yunior, the playingest player around, refers to one of the hundred women he's screwing as "a girl of zero note". Just something to be used and forgotten. The double standards abound. Oscar himself; "sweet", fat Oscar who is depicted as being so obese that women flee from him, describes one of his female obsessions as being "not hot enough, in his mind, to date openly."

And while we're talking about "sweet" Oscar let's talk about the culmination of the story in which our hero travels back to the DR to win his lady love, Ybon. His single mindedness at having her becomes not so heroic, and definitley not sweet, but the epitome of a man who cannot take no for an answer. A man basically stalking a woman. And a woman who is genuinely afraid.

And how about that ultimate symbol of violence against women when, after the first time Oscar "meets" Ybon's boyfriend and the boyfriend retaliates against her by first beating the shit out of her and then shoving a gun in her vagina. Nothing like a girl being raped by a firearm to make me want to read and re-read a novel.

I'm not naive enough to think that these things don't happen, and I'm not necessarily offended by these things being written about in this way... if there's a point. Perhaps a scathing commentary about the misogyny in Dominican society. But he doesn't get there and I was left with so much anger and confusion. I feel like I need to explain away my negative review, that I'm not just a silly woman having an emotional reaction. I wonder why all I could focus on was the misogyny when everyone else can see so much more. And then I wonder, why don't people focus on it? It's horrific, why aren't we talking about it? I mean if it is a scathing commentary on the misogyny of Dominican society, Latin American society, even immigrant society, then lets talk about it as such, and not as a new nerd manifesto. In all the reviews I've read, this book comes off as the coming of age-story of sweet, but over-weight Oscar, with sparkling imagery and vibrant references to sci-fi, fantasy and comic books; "a novel for a new America." God, I hope not.(less)

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07/01/08

Patrick rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

bookshelves: books-read-in-2008

Read in August, 2008

recommended to Patrick by: Kevin Waterman
recommends it for: People who don't think they'd like the story of an immigrant family's journey to the states

Hype can really change the way you perceive a book. Although the buzz for 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' has been steadily building since it was released almost a year ago, the book I picked up at the bookstore had a big, gold starburst attached to it reading 'WINNER - 2008 Pulitzer Prize', and had been brandished 'THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ' by no less authority than my friend Kevin right here on this very website.

It's almost not fair, the way we build up these books, or mov...more Hype can really change the way you perceive a book. Although the buzz for 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' has been steadily building since it was released almost a year ago, the book I picked up at the bookstore had a big, gold starburst attached to it reading 'WINNER - 2008 Pulitzer Prize', and had been brandished 'THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ' by no less authority than my friend Kevin right here on this very website.

It's almost not fair, the way we build up these books, or movies, or other pop-culture phenomenon as the new best thing ever, because we set up a culture of expectations to which nothing could ever live up. But, at the same time, when something strikes such a profound chord in our hearts, souls, and psyches, it's hard not to want to climb up to the mountaintops (or perhaps our laptops, rather) and let the whole world in on our discoveries. The drawback, of course, is that every person who encounters these things are expecting some sort of transcendent, perspective-altering experience, and when a merely very good or even great book or film comes along instead, we find ourselves a little let down.

Such was the case with ' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao', a great book that I enjoyed immensely, but left my world-view more or less intact.

The book's title is a misleading, because although it does encompass the relatively brief life of a young man named Oscar, it is really about a great deal more, detailing the heritage and history of the de Leon family, from their cursed beginnings in Santo Domingo to the miseries and triumphs that followed them to the States, all the while providing a great deal of background on the history of the Dominican Republic as well, especially the horrid era of Rafael Trujillo, a dictator who ruled the island with an iron fist for over 30 years. The writing is rich and the stories engaging, and the characters have a great deal of depth.

At times, however, the book can be a bit frustrating. My biggest gripe is the extensive use of 'spanglish' throughout the novel. I don't speak much Spanish, and contextual clues can only take you so far. I do most of my reading as far from a computer as I can, which meant going online later on and trying to decipher certain words or phrases that had thrown me for a loop, often to no avail, as online translations aren't very good (for proof, I'd refer you to my grades in Spanish class in college). It's also unclear who is narrating the book until around halfway through, when I was surprised to learn that it wasn't a typical omniscient entity narrating the story, but actually a real person who all of a sudden would break into first person and become a character in the story. This bothered me, as it sort of altered my interpretation of the story up to that point and going forward.

In the end though, these are small gripes, and the book is beautiful, affecting, and heartbreaking, because we've all known someone like Oscar, who just doesn't quite fit in, but wants to so badly, but not at the expense of being himself. There's so much muted heartbreak in the character of Oscar, it's almost physically painful. Here's Oscar watching his equally nerdy friends get girlfriends while he remains alone. Here's Oscar being the intellectual whore to some horrible college girl. Here's Oscar waiting patiently with his perfectly arranged sci-fi books, the books that mean everything in the world to him, before packing them up and leaving after none of his students show up to his after-school science fiction and fantasy club. Here's Oscar wanting to die because he fears he will never be loved.

And, finally, a sliver of redemption through all the sadness, like a brief, small smile or laugh at the end of a long crying jag. You root for Oscar, just like you root for that friend in high school or college (or maybe it's you?) who you know is never going to get the girl and will always fall into the friend trap, but you still hope against hope that maybe tonight is the night everything works out for him. It's the quiet desperation of emerging manhood, and Junot Diaz perfectly captures it, and he and Oscar break your heart in doing so. (less)

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01/25/09

... rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Read in February, 2009

I enjoyed-the-hell outta this book. Right off the bat I loved the writing. It was superb. It was funny. And Diaz’ voice was really kind of refreshing…in a current kind of a way. That may have more to do with the previous 10 books I read before getting to this book, but still it will be interesting to see how it stands the test of time. It will be interesting to see if the patois of the Dominican American narrator will seem quaint in 20 years. I loved it in the here-and-now.

I rece...more I enjoyed-the-hell outta this book. Right off the bat I loved the writing. It was superb. It was funny. And Diaz’ voice was really kind of refreshing…in a current kind of a way. That may have more to do with the previous 10 books I read before getting to this book, but still it will be interesting to see how it stands the test of time. It will be interesting to see if the patois of the Dominican American narrator will seem quaint in 20 years. I loved it in the here-and-now.

I received a mixed bag of opinions that made me somewhat reticent to give the book a whirl when I was trying to decide if I should read this. So it is interesting to me to try and figure out why some would dislike it, or even be kind of ambivalent, where as I and others thoroughly enjoyed it. It seems that it takes some effort on behalf of the reader to really get everything out of it. The reason for this is mostly because of the structure of the narrative.

The narrative is structured around a generational tale of alienation, expectation, subjugation, and transgression from the perspective of Yunior (who you do not really meet until about 150 pages into the book), with brief interjections from his (ex) girlfriend, Lola. Yunior is an outsider in relationship to the subject of the generational tale(the Cabral family), while Lola is a member of the family. So Yunior takes on a somewhat omniscient role (some of the explanations for this become kind of clumsy, but it does not really bother me too much). This generational tale is expansive. It ventures beyond the characters and the timeframe of the immediate narrative to give a context and a depth of understanding necessary to delve into the themes Diaz is exploring. I think it is the way Diaz jumped around so informally that may lead some readers to fail in giving it the rigorous attention that it needs for full satisfaction. The story is really more complex than it may appear at its surface.

Although the book is named after Oscar, I do not think he is intended to be the main character in the narrative. In the strictest sense, he is the main character in that Diaz used him as the armature from which to hang all of the central themes of the book and around which the climax is centered, but not the main character in that he is only a byproduct of the real main character which is the Dominican Republic and the Diaspora that has entombed its culture. As a result, you can most identify with any one of a number of different characters – be it Yunior, Lola, Beli, or Oscar – for they are all equally well-developed. As for me, I mostly connected with the narrator, so I really started to enjoy the book much more after I figured out who he was, and he started to play a larger role in the telling of, and participation in, the story.

With all that said, there is a lot going on in this book. Upon finishing it I am amazed at how deftly it was constructed and executed…with humor as well as with an academic level of detail. I kind of wish it had ended differently, but I was not surprised at all. Maybe poor Oscar deserved some kind of concession. Toto.

(less)

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12/14/07

David rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

bookshelves: read-in-2007

Read in December, 2007

I enjoyed this book a lot, and think it deserves the good reviews it's received. I just hadn't expected it to be quite as *sad* as it was. Somehow, it wasn't the more obviously depressing aspects (e.g. the persecution and torture that were routinely practiced under the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic) that got to me so much as the smaller stuff. The continued failure of the various members of Oscar's family to connect, the accumulated hostility between generations, as well as th...more I enjoyed this book a lot, and think it deserves the good reviews it's received. I just hadn't expected it to be quite as *sad* as it was. Somehow, it wasn't the more obviously depressing aspects (e.g. the persecution and torture that were routinely practiced under the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic) that got to me so much as the smaller stuff. The continued failure of the various members of Oscar's family to connect, the accumulated hostility between generations, as well as the meanness and bullying suffered by outsider Oscar throughout, were ultimately more depressing than the earlier, more overtly brutal, events in Santo Domingo.

You keep rooting for Oscar to catch a break and he never really does. Equally depressing was the narrator's ongoing inability to transcend the machisto Latino stereotype of repeated infidelity because of an apparent need to screw any woman that came in range. Only the women are strong in this book, and only one of them appears to be granted a shot at happiness.

Fortunately, the book is not a total descent into darkness - primarily because the main narrator is sympathetic, funny and smart. He provides insightful commentary on Oscar's family affairs (even if he is unable to translate the insights to his own life). Oscar's family history unfolds according to a relatively complicated framework, intercutting past and present scenes using several flashbacks. Handled inexpertly, this has the potential to be confusing and/or irritating*, but Diaz manages it perfectly.

(* The execrable "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" comes to mind.)

A few random comments:

1. Diaz doesn't eschew the apparently obligatory 'magical' element, but I found the symbolism of the mongoose-lion critter in the canefield a bit murky (though I did learn the new word 'chabin(e)' : Person of mixed-blood who appears to bear the characteristics of only the lighter skinned parent; sometimes referred to in English as being "yellow.")

2. I think this book must achieve some kind of record for the number of acknowledgements made by the author. The impulse to thank everyone who ever gave him encouragement is understandable, perhaps even laudable. But I personally would have drawn the line at thanking whole cities (Perth Amboy?)

(less)

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09/09/08

Jason rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in September, 2008

recommended to Jason by: Susan Clearfield
recommends it for: Dominicans, Americans, Dominican-Americans

A lot of people seem to either hate or love this book. Most people get irritated with misleading title, the hard-to-follow narration/storyline, but mostly with the eclectic use of spanglish that is scattered throughout the book and with no footnote, i might add!!!

In an interview, Junot Diaz said that he offered up the Spanish without translation because he wanted to give English readers an idea of the immigrant experience. The spanish in this book reflects the immigrant experienc...more

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07/28/07

Mike rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Read in August, 2007

Just got a hold of this, and am very excited...

...and devoured it, in a couple days. First, I was a fan of _Drown_, Diaz' collection (now 10 years old), particularly for its ability to define and then to defy the painful events narrated. One of the stories is a masterpiece about two boys who kind of back into a homosexual encounter, and then move on without really grappling with the experience, and it's always struck me as generous, funny, moving -- just a model for precise languag...more

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10/13/08

Sandi rated it:

bookshelves: 2008, literature

Read in November, 2008

"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" really gets 4-1/2 stars from me. However, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who likes a linear story, a well-defined plot, and easily comprehensible English. Probably the hardest thing to do when reading this book is not trying to translate all the Spanish in it. Trying to translate just slows you down and keeps you from really feeling the rhythm of the text. Fortunately, I have lived in Southern California my whole life and have studied a lit...more

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12/08/08

Beth(MN) rated it:

bookshelves: 2009, book-club, contemporary-fiction, pullitzer-winners, tnbbc-winter-challenge

Read in January, 2009

If bad language and graphic (not hot) sexual descriptions throw you into a moral tizzy, don’t read this book, even though it did win the Pullitzer. But for people who can look past that and reach the conclusion that foul language and a course description of life doesn’t have to be gratuitous, read it. There’s an excellent chance this book will be unlike anything else you’ve ever read.

In one sentence, this book is about Oscar de Leon, an ultra nerd who can’t get laid but...more If bad language and graphic (not hot) sexual descriptions throw you into a moral tizzy, don’t read this book, even though it did win the Pullitzer. But for people who can look past that and reach the conclusion that foul language and a course description of life doesn’t have to be gratuitous, read it. There’s an excellent chance this book will be unlike anything else you’ve ever read.

In one sentence, this book is about Oscar de Leon, an ultra nerd who can’t get laid but really, really wants to do it. Past that, the book is also about a Dominican curse, a fuku, that can plague a family for generations.

Oscar believes the fuku has manifested itself in his life by making him the least desirable Dominican ever born. He is overweight, unattractive and is a science fiction and fantasy obsessed loser who would rather write his own bad sci-fi than exercise. Oscar spends most of his young life falling deeply in love with girl after girl and in every instance, drawing the dreaded “friend” card, not even getting his first kiss until well after he’s graduated from college.

The first section of this book floored me in a good way. It captured my attention on several levels—I like dirty words, I like nerds, I’ve never read anything quite like Diaz before and I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the DR, thanks to several anthropology courses I took in college that focused on Diaspora and the African experience/influence in the Caribbean. From that context, 10 years later and you find me desperately wishing I was still in contact with the other people in that class so we could have discussed the ramifications of the Trujillo-era on the characters in this book (yeah, yeah, nerd alert).

But then it lost my attention when the viewpoint shifted from Oscar to other members of his family. Despite his name in the title, very little of this book is about Oscar. A very large portion of the book is dedicated to his sister, his mother, his grandfather… At first this was a disappointment but before long, Diaz’s ability to tell a good story captured my interest all over again and by the end of the story, I had taken a personal interest in all the characters and what it could mean when a multi-generational curse kept taking potshots at every misstep throughout a person’s life.

I couldn’t help but think about “the curse” from a more practical viewpoint as well. What impact do our family’s social and demographic statistics play on our life experiences? Would Oscar’s life have been different if his mother and her sisters had been born boys? What if her father was never imprisoned? What if her mother never met the Gangster? What if his mother had never moved to New York? Would Oscar have gotten laid any sooner if any of these things would have been different? Do any of those things matter if your family is under a curse?

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would have no qualms about picking up novels this author publishes in the future and am thinking it's high time I picked up his book of short stories.(less)

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11/03/07

Debbie rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

bookshelves: highlyrecommend

I am not finished yet, but I am really loving this book. What a voice, what lyrical, amazing language. He is truly gifted.

OK, I read it.

I cannot help but be influenced by our country's current talk about illegal immigrants, which has led to public discourse about immigrants in general. It is a talk that, to many, risks cold analysis, and for some, resentment, anger. So, given this backdrop, I personally cannot help but see this book as primarily an immigrant saga with ...more I am not finished yet, but I am really loving this book. What a voice, what lyrical, amazing language. He is truly gifted.

OK, I read it.

I cannot help but be influenced by our country's current talk about illegal immigrants, which has led to public discourse about immigrants in general. It is a talk that, to many, risks cold analysis, and for some, resentment, anger. So, given this backdrop, I personally cannot help but see this book as primarily an immigrant saga with several themes related to this--painful diaspora, scars from a cruel government carried in the bloodstream (this point is put forth metaphorically, a reference to this as a curse--fuku), passed on to children now here with us, isolation and need for cultural identity (altho this was not a real push in the book, like other immigration sagas I have read. He was very careful not to be immigration-saga-like), the unrequited love of country and culture of one's origin (unrequited when controlled by a cruel and heartless regime).

The overall energy that pulled the story together was represented by the character Oscar Wao's pure, charming, idealistic drive for love. Oscar is a son of an illegal immigrant--part of the Dominican diaspora who came here bruised and worn down from a harsh regime. He grew up in New Jersey, your basic fat kid who escapes his painful life by way of writing and reading. But what makes Oscar unique is his determination, despite obstacles, to find love. The irony of respect and love of women by a man who cannot receive love in return while living in a culture that seems to disrespect women, is, at least to me, the major force of this book. And yet this man, unattractive and rejected sexually, does not give up his idealistic quest, And more importantly, until the end, he never understands that he is able to obtain what other men, who can only be intimate with sex, cannot--a deep and abiding understanding of women. His pure ideals are like the comic characters he reads. He lives in a world of sci fi and fantasy. He writes this world. And it stays there--in fantasy-- until the very end. But when his dream becomes a reality, Oscar, becomes a super hero. I think this character, like all great characters, is symbolic.

Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him.

That about says it all.

Brilliant book. Lots of footnotes that would be annoying if not for Diaz's great humor. I would however recommend researching quickly the Trujillo regime. This will help.

(less)

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09/19/07

Michael rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

There was a lot about this novel that I liked, and a lot that I disliked. I know from other reviews that what -I- got out of the book was quite different than what other people got out of it.

The biggest feeling I had was anger that our world does this to people (Oscar, that is). It shames me. Call me a dreamer if you wish, but I think that if we treated our fellow man better, and didn't ridicule him or her for no good purpose, all of us would be better for it. Maybe more kids would e...more

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12/26/07

zan rated it:

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Read in December, 2007

I might be controversial by giving this book only 3 stars, but it didn't click with me the way I expected it to based on the universal "Wao" it got from everyone else. All those Mordor references felt forced, and I felt a bit attacked as a reader rather than invited. Anyone else want to join in my dissent?

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07/07/08

Bart rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: Readers willing to take the good with the not-so-good in pursuit of excellent American fiction

This book falls just shy of exceptional – which is not to write that it doesn’t have exceptional parts. It has plenty of exceptional parts, actually. Trouble is, very few of them concern the book’s protagonist and namesake; and despite being called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao few of the book’s wondrous parts have anything to do with Oscar Wao.

This book won most of last year’s literary awards. That may or may not be overstating its worth. Ever since “The Brief...more This book falls just shy of exceptional – which is not to write that it doesn’t have exceptional parts. It has plenty of exceptional parts, actually. Trouble is, very few of them concern the book’s protagonist and namesake; and despite being called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao few of the book’s wondrous parts have anything to do with Oscar Wao.

This book won most of last year’s literary awards. That may or may not be overstating its worth. Ever since “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” appeared as a short story in The New Yorker eight years ago – and, actually, a few years before that even – critics and Lit professors have been waiting desperately for a chance to give Junot Diaz the full brunt of their praise. This obviously has more to do with culture and that lame wing of English departments called “cultural criticism” than it has to do with Diaz’s talent, but there we are.

Don’t doubt Diaz’s talent, though. When he is telling stories about the protagonist’s family and its struggles in the Dominican Republic, he is at his best. He takes a number of Dominican history books – and a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa – and spins them into a compelling, insightful short history of 1930-1980. The book has no better parts than when it treats a deep character, like Oscar’s maternal grandfather, and a deep history, like the reign of Rafael Trujillo, and has so much storytelling to get done that it doesn’t bother being amazed by itself, y con cuantas palabras el escritor puede incluir en espanol.

But too much of the rest of the time, there are Diaz’s twists on what are becoming lamentable literary staples. There’s the comic book and Sci-Fi collection, of course, and a hundred or so allusions to its characters. There’s the “distinctive voice” of the narrator – UrbanDictionary.com meets “Blood In, Blood Out”. And there’s the author’s own inability to distinguish what is dominicano from what is latino, and what is latino from what is universal.

In other words, for writing about Dominicans, Diaz gets an unfairly wide berth. Unfair to him, that is. There are plenty of moments in this book when, as the reader, you think, What a writer! But then there are other times when the author is speeding through a lesson on what it means to be Dominican, and you are thinking, Hold on, he’s describing Mexicans I know. Or when the writer is explaining that Latin men are obsessed with sex, and you are thinking, Yup, along with white men, and black men, and Asian men, and even, I assume, Eskimo men. This lack of perspective on Diaz’s part, one suspects, comes not from a lack of talent or intellect but from being coddled – first by professors, and later by critics, who are either too anxious to recognize a talented latino writer or scared to death of being called (horror of all horrors) “racist” by one of their peers.

How unfortunate. What Diaz needed at some point during the seven years he enhanced his short story was to have someone say: “Not good enough! Good enough, probably, to win a Pulitzer and a pile of other awards, yes, but not good enough to justify your gifts. Look, Junot, you can go deeper than this. You can take this nerdy cardboard guy named Oscar Wao and do more with him. But in order to do that, you’ve got to get past the fact that he’s a Dominican. ‘Porque el es un dominicano’ can only take a character so far. And you have the ability to go further. Put him on that island, with a million other Dominicans, and then figure out what, aside from a weight problem and science fiction and a curse, drives him to make such a maniacal choice in the end.”

But there’s lots of hope. In the next few years, Diaz is going to revisit this novel and realize he could have done more. Then he’s going to realize that his critics – the very people who should have demanded more – are too easily fooled. He’s going to eschew their praise and go deeper. When that happens, what results will be genuinely wondrous.(less)

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05/03/08

Abby rated it:

(review of isbn 1594489580)

Read in June, 2008

This book was kind of disappointing. It had a lot of pages. I'd have to go check to see how many for sure, but only about 83 of them were actually necessary for the story. The rest of it was just filler swear words and phrases in Spanish that I didn't understand. Oh yeah, also references to nerdy things that I've never heard of, like fantasy movies and famous sci fi books. (Because I of course, am the epitome of not-nerdy.)

The whole book swore and swore and swore like a swearing sail...more