The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Sep 27, 2012 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Hobbits; Individualists; Emancipators; Bully-Fighters

Shelves: race, trujillo, about-books, mothers-and-daughters, freedom, nyt-notable-book, voice, pov-multi, fate, latin-america, latino, new-jersey, 21c, magical-realism, memory, courage, family, love, pov-alternating, pulitzer-prize, favorites, favorites-contemporary

--“There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid Hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.” (LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954, p.140)

--“Men need many words before deeds.” (LOTR: The Two Towers, p. 523)

--So much Death! What can men do against such reckless hate? Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them. For death and glory? For Rohan. For your people. Yes. Yes. The horn of Helm Hammerhand shall sound in th...more

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Brian Robbins Steve wrote: "Brian wrote: "Steve wrote: "Brian wrote: "Really good review, Steve, enjoyed reading it.
Although it strays away from the main points an...more Steve wrote: "Brian wrote: "Steve wrote: "Brian wrote: "Really good review, Steve, enjoyed reading it.
Although it strays away from the main points and interest of your review but am interested in your view abo..."

Thanks for your response Steve, it’s been great fun trying to pull together what I do think about this, and I look forward to what you think. One of the best parts of GRs to me is finding just how differently other people view the books you love.

The Christian parallels to be found in “Lord of the Rings” I agree are undeniable. It’s been interesting this year during my first-ever systematic reading of the whole OT, to find many more biblical parallels related to that, particularly to the martial & heroic tales it contains. I believe there are also very strong parallels to be found in Tolkien to Scandinavian & Celtic mythologies. Sadly I’m not familiar with that material, although a number of critics assure us that they are there. These however, aren’t necessarily in accord with a Christian world view.

The problem I have with an "allegorical" interpretation of “Lord of the Rings” relates to what I think of as the nature of allegory. To me allegory at root is a very cerebral device, almost mathematical in nature. The author of allegory consciously constructs a story to provide a symbolic representation of underlying truths as they perceive them, related usually to morals, religion or politics. In allegory, each detail of each character or event in the story, equates to a factor or detail of the moral or intellectual world the author is representing. In “The Faerie Queen”, Spencer is very explicit about the equation, naming the elements of the moral world as he represents them in his poem.

My initial comments to you mentioned 3 allegories but left out 2 that I’ve read more than once – “Pilgrim’s Progress” & Lewis’ “Pilgrim’s Regress”. “Pilgrim’s Progress” resembles “The Faerie Queen” in its very explicit equation of the details of his story with elements of the Spiritual journey of salvation as represented by his very bleak, Calvinistic theology.

In both allegories, the story is beautifully written and can be enjoyed in itself, but its principle purpose is to explicitly represent & define a moral or religious world view. In the cases of “Pilgrim’s Regress” & “Animal Farm” the same principle purpose is clear.

Narnia is a little different. In the stories there are distinct elements of allegory within the stories. There’s little doubt that Lewis consciously makes Aslan = Christ, The White Witch = Satan. Somewhere he said that it was amazing how much theology you could smuggle into a story. He consciously represents a religious & moral world view through story, with the story acting as a vehicle consciously constructed for that purpose. Lewis however strays outside the strict bounds of allegory in the sense that not all parts of the story are allegorical. That may have been deliberate, carelessness or failure of creativity.

To me the two elements essential to allegory are 1) the primary intention to represent a moral, religious or political world view
2) The conscious construction & use of the story as a vehicle to represent that view.

I don’t think that Tolkien in any sense wrote his stories in that way or with that intention. The slow, evolving way he developed the immense detail of his imaginary worlds, points to a primary intention of developing that world, not using it to consciously represent a moral or political world view. That would have been for him simply a distraction. Like any author, that is not to say that his own fundamental values and beliefs, as well as to some extent contemporary events, did not influence and help to form what he wrote, but I can’t see a direct, conscious effort by Tolkien to represent his moral & religious world through his story.

Sorry Steve, this all seems like a longwinded way of straining at a gnat – excuse the mixed metaphors, but I do think it has an important effect on getting the fullest enjoyment from this book. When a book is written as an allegory it obviously pays to interpret it in detail as just that, an allegory in order to fully understand and appreciate the equation that the author is making.

But to apply an allegorical interpretation to a book that is written with a different intention is in danger of reducing the book to less than it is, constricting what can be enjoyed from the reading. To me “Lord of the Rings” (even after 8 readings) still has more resonant and allusive qualities to it than allegory. At the straightforward story telling level, Tolkien is just too caught up in telling a great story, to focus consciously beyond the story.(less)
Oct 01, 2012 10:16am

Steve aka Sckenda Brian wrote: "Steve wrote: "Brian wrote: "Steve wrote: "Brian wrote: "Really good review, Steve, enjoyed reading it.
Although it strays away from the...more
Oct 09, 2012 10:33am

Feb 15, 2009 Cameron rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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," Ernest Hemingway decided to ex...more

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Apr 10, 2008 David Abrams rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 w...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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Dec 24, 2007 Andy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 and unexpress...more

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Sep 26, 2012 Cassy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: award-pulitzer, physical-own, 2012, fiction-general, region-america-canada, region-latin-america, event-met-author

Honestly, if someone had warned me that this book would barrage me, page after page, line after line, clause after clause, with obscure dorky references, Dominican Republican history lessons, and Spanish colloquialisms, I may not have picked it up.*

But I am glad I did.

It is comforting to realize that on the scale of nerd-dom, I fall on the light end. I could follow the shout-outs to science fiction authors, as well as the Lord of the Rings allusions (of which there were many). But I was lost fo...more

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Oct 01, 2008 Malbadeen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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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Jan 08, 2009 Kim rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: meh-at-you, gr-friend-recommendations

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 political turmoil that is the Domi...more

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Jan 23, 2008 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 escape the gr...more

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Feb 22, 2009 The Crimson Fucker rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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!! he watches Akira which I think is kind of cool! he wa...more

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Jul 18, 2008 Dan rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: never_finished

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 the...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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Aug 26, 2008 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who don't think they'd like the story of an immigrant family's journey to the states

Recommended to Patrick by: Kevin Waterman

Shelves: books-read-in-2008

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 othe...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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Aditya Mandalemula Patrick, my comment is written in response to what you've written in your review about 'Oscar Wao', but it is not your review that is doing young read...more
Jul 26, 2012 09:16am

Patrick Aditya wrote: "Patrick, my comment is written in response to what you've written in your review about 'Oscar Wao', but it is not your review that is d...more
Jul 26, 2012 09:44am

Aug 29, 2011 Mariel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: I fell in love again

Recommended to Mariel by: footnote historians. Foot like Achilles

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao spoke my language of self consciousness. The parts of yourself that you wish weren't there and cannot forget about. They could perch on your shoulder like not so polar opposites of shame and pride. Maybe not spoken fluently but we could get by and have a nice conversation about all the good stuff like families, books, musics, hopes and disappointments. I liked being talked to. It means a lot to me to be able to use my own heart and mind and feel something abo...more The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao spoke my language of self consciousness. The parts of yourself that you wish weren't there and cannot forget about. They could perch on your shoulder like not so polar opposites of shame and pride. Maybe not spoken fluently but we could get by and have a nice conversation about all the good stuff like families, books, musics, hopes and disappointments. I liked being talked to. It means a lot to me to be able to use my own heart and mind and feel something about what I'm being told. I wish that Lola's boyfriend cared more for Oscar than out of guilt. His voice looked twice, one eye on Oscar and the other still on himself. It was honest in an embarrassed way but without the whole insight that 20/20 hindsight affords. It was right I just wished it wasn't so. If I'm wishing I am in the book. I loved that feeling. I didn't want things to happen that were going to happen because the patterns had already been in their own loop. No, I didn't care what he thought about Oscar more than what I thought about Oscar (I kinda love him). It would have been more right if the guy could have spoken for himself. It was the plight of Oscar's life that he did not speak for himself. He was stuck with the shadows he stood in (a 300 pound shadow). But I cared about Oscar a whole lot and that means a lot to me. I cared about a kid who didn't know how to feel what was in his heart in the flesh. Wanting to ask him himself meant a lot to me. I wanted to hug him when he stands up to his friends, when he falls in love yet again. I wanted to shake him when he breaks his own heart yet again. I kinda love Lola, his sister. I loved Lola A LOT. I'd put up a poster of her on my wall. She was a heroine in trying to see people for who they were. That's my kind of girl! I liked that the references were a part of their lives. Language of heart and shadows. English, Spanish, DR culture, The Lord of the Rings, footnotes and history. History not as a footnote but influences, another sort of shadow. The shadows could fight themselves on the walls at night like a scary shadow puppet theater (I can do a mean duck). I was scared of their mom, Beli, as much as I was scared of Trujillo. It meant a lot to me to feel I was on their side and be scared of their mom. I was scared of the culture of sex and expectations. I was scared of not getting to be heard in all the languages you could possibly use to make a new language of self. I liked 'Oscar' because I wanted to tell other people to screw off and read Watership Down with Lola and watch sci-fi with Oscar (but not Blakes 7! Jesus). I knew why they didn't because it was the self conscious language that could be a lot like mine. It felt good to give a damn about what happened to them. That's all I wanted was to give a shit and this book did that. Tell me how you feel and let me see enough of it to know if I could pick up those expressions and recognize it again if I saw it on someone else (or myself). This is a good book.

The place in my heart that awards star ratings on goodreads says four. It might be more later. I'll have to see how the whole inner footnote thing goes down. If they sit on my shoulders it is going to be a five. Could be... (Edit from 2012: Not a five. No dandruff.)

Now here's my fuku survival kit!
One badass big sister. If you don't have one I'll be her. I always wanted to be an older sister.
Say three times fast "I do believe in Fuku! I do believe in Fuku! I do believe in Fuku!"
Find something you really love (it doesn't have to be Blakes 7! It had better not be Blakes 7) and wear it across your chest like a bullet proof vest.
Make stories out of the worst kinda history crap. I'd make my hero a Haitian who was denied acknowledgement. I acknowledge you! (I don't get that the footnotes were hard to follow. If you pay attention to history of anywhere else it's recognizable. Racism, roots, pride. Rage. The three r's and a p. It's what you look at to be self conscious of! The footnotes of life.)
If you're Mario Vargas Llosa you probably don't get a fuku survival kit. I suspect that Diaz doesn't like him one little bit.I think he deserves protection against fuku the same as everyone else. He's probably not afraid, though. Step two!
Wear a gas mask. It's contagious!
Above all else (shoulders of giants all else!): speak for yourself. You don't have to know all you want to say. Open your mouth. That's it. Second thought, don't wear a gas mask. Not listening is fuku.(less)

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Apr 01, 2010 Gus Sanchez rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I knew kids like Oscar Wao. In fact, I was Oscar Wao, an overweight, extremely nerdy kid whose lifelong ambition was to simply be cool. And so much of what Oscar Wao endures - and, more often not, through his own hand - is hilariously and uncomfortably familiar to me.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a genius work from Junot Diaz, who emerged a decade ago in a blaze of glory after the publication of his debut collection of short stories, Drown. That rare voice that speaks of the culture c...more I knew kids like Oscar Wao. In fact, I was Oscar Wao, an overweight, extremely nerdy kid whose lifelong ambition was to simply be cool. And so much of what Oscar Wao endures - and, more often not, through his own hand - is hilariously and uncomfortably familiar to me.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a genius work from Junot Diaz, who emerged a decade ago in a blaze of glory after the publication of his debut collection of short stories, Drown. That rare voice that speaks of the culture clash of living in the twin worlds of Latin America and the United States, Diaz perfectly encapsulates the multi-generational struggle every Hispanic-born child faces in America. Although Oscar de Leon (later Wao) is the focal point of this novel, the narration by his friend Yunior (really, it's Junot Diaz speaking) reflects the emotionally wrenching diaspora that a majority of Dominicans endured throughout the years of the violently cruel dictatorship of Trujillo, and how that homesickness stuck with not just the exiled, but their American-born children as well. It's not just Oscar's sweetly disastrous life that's examined here, but Yunior and Oscar's sister Lola as well, a struggle that, while born from the tropics of the Dominican Republic, are easy for non-dominicanos to identify with.

There's so much about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao that's so immediately appealing. Yunior's narration is forceful, full of brio, yet also moistened with guilt. His chronicle of Oscar's nerd-obsessed upbringing (Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican Tolkien) parallels Yunior's insistence, his pull, at being the typical Dominican male, full of sexual vigor and bravado. And that's a common theme explored here; Oscar is a complete anomaly as a Dominicano, completely lacking in that sexual gene, that charisma and confidence that his male peers surely possess, yet Oscar makes no attempt in reconciling that difference. It's that difference that produces many laughs, but, ultimately, horrifying heartbreak over what could have been.

Simply put, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is truly wonderful, bridging the gap between the eloquent, first person narrative prose of someone like Philip Roth, and the hardcore nerd obsessions that Diaz and myself and many other Hispanic males like me (and non-Hispanic males and females as well) surrendered ourselves to easily. It was a 15 year gap between Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and I'm hoping there won't be such a gap for his follow up. (less)

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Dec 20, 2007 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-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 the...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?)

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Aug 07, 2007 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 language to capture,...more

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view all 12 comments

deleted user And yay for Junot Diaz, who writes stuff good.
Apr 12, 2009 08:03pm

Mike Thanks David, Jessica, -- and Montambo for that account of reading. I think that story punches me in similar ways every time, too.

I think it's harder...more
Apr 13, 2009 05:04am

Sep 18, 2008 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Dominicans, Americans, Dominican-Americans

Recommended to Jason by: Susan Clearfield

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 experience. The alienati...more

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Sep 21, 2012 Annalisa rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, literary

These are the reasons I'm abandoning this book:

1. It's crude. And it's not just the overuse of the f word I'm over. The sex and violence is crude too. There's love that's personal and emotional and touches something deep down inside. And then there's banal sex that devalues human connection and emotion, the kind of thing someone who was desensitized to real relationships in preference of porn would write. This is the later. Even inexperienced Oscar's interest in women is banal and of no depth.

2....more

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Nov 17, 2011 Angus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-prize, nbcc-award, reviewed-and-blogged, tournament-of-books

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Intro

The geek and the literary reader has a common book in their shelves. I think I am both. Obviously, my reading leans toward the more serious, highbrow books. I have attempted to read other genres, and when I did just recently, the fulfillment of finishing is just not as great as that with the books that I really like. This is not to say that anything that is not literary is not good. It’s just not me.

And although I am not a geeky reader, I am a geek by heart...more

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Nov 07, 2008 Sandi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, literature, pulitzer-prize-winners

"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 little Spanish. A...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Scott Axsom rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” was a frustrating read for me and I truly loved the concept of the book - don’t really know why I struggled so with it. It’s written in a highly colloquial style but I actually loved that aspect of the novel. The story’s also steeped in magical realism but that, too, is something with which I’m particularly sympathetic. So, what was it that made this read such a drag on me?

It may have been the jumbled timeline, combined with Beli’s seeming lack of humanity...more “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” was a frustrating read for me and I truly loved the concept of the book - don’t really know why I struggled so with it. It’s written in a highly colloquial style but I actually loved that aspect of the novel. The story’s also steeped in magical realism but that, too, is something with which I’m particularly sympathetic. So, what was it that made this read such a drag on me?

It may have been the jumbled timeline, combined with Beli’s seeming lack of humanity - indeed, by the book’s end, I still found little (though some) about her to admire, although I did possess newfound sympathy for her. Those two elements, along with the perspective changes throughout the first half of the book, made it all feel less fluid than I, perhaps, needed at this point in my reading.

As for the good; Diaz is a wickedly tricky story-teller and “Oscar Wao” is always working on many levels. First off, there’s the clear polemical take on the Dominican diaspora that began during the Trujillo era. I love polemics and Diaz does it well. Additionally (seemingly primarily), Diaz explores cultural mores surrounding love and sex, venturing into the alleyways of unrequited love and love-for-hire, as well as the torment and angst love has represented to teenagers since time immemorial, and he does it with wit and beauty and compassion.

One binding thread throughout the work is the mythology of “fuku” or curse. The narrator, Yunior, reckons that protagonist Oscar’s family has been operating under the influence of a fuku for generations and their particular curse deals with love. He describes how love and beauty have brought unimaginable pain to the de Leon family time and again and here’s where I think Diaz really soars. The seminal moment of the family’s fuku is sparked by a daughter's extraordinary beauty, ultimately leading to the deaths of many, and I found this symbolism to be the most profound; specifically, the outsized (and often catastrophically misguided) value mankind has always placed on beauty.

One thing seems certain; Diaz tells an avowedly allegorical story in “Oscar Wao”. Yunior, a demonstrably unreliable narrator, relates details of a particularly dark period in Oscar’s life during which he drives endlessly, thinking about his own writing and contemplating suicide. Diaz (via Yunior) ends the chapter with this:
“Nothing more exhilarating (he wrote) than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.”
Diaz makes clear that myth and fantasy and speculation travel arm-in-arm throughout this tale (all tales?) and, I suspect, he's also suggesting that their boundaries are highly personal and ever-changing.

Diaz later describes one of Oscar’s dreams in which he encounters a man with a mask holding a book and, when Oscar looks closer, the book is blank. Perhaps a blank book is what the author has presented to us in “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, a work filled with mythology and symbolism, convention and pain, and a timeless message that the reader may make of what the moment dictates. I found his perspective on our always tragic and often destructive obsession with the physical to be one of the most heart-rending and trenchant I've encountered in modern fiction. Perhaps what he's really exploring here is our own fuku.
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Feb 10, 2009 Beth F. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, pulitzer, 2009, general-fiction, tnbbc-winter-2008

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...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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Apr 25, 2008 Debbie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 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 several themes related to...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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Dec 28, 2007 zan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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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May 29, 2009 Roy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is a true wonder and treasure, the very definition of a 5 star read. I'm placing it in the exhalted position of one of my 3 favorite books of all time, sitting alongside The World According to Garp and Love in the Time of Cholera. It is a magnificent chronicle of a Dominican-American family and the fuku that haunts them throughout generations, with its main focus on poor Oscar, a heavyset nerd personified in eternal search for love, preferably the variety that is accompanied by sex. Th...more

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Jul 24, 2008 Bart rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”...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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Jun 28, 2008 Abby rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 sailor, and then...more

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Apr 24, 2008 Gregory Baird rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-winners, fiction-literature

“I did all I could and it still wasn’t enough.”

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”

Meet Oscar de León. Once upon a time, in elementary school, Oscar was a slick Dominican kid who seemed to have a typical life ahead of him. Then, around the time he hit puberty, Oscar gained a whole lot of weight, became awkward both physicall...more “I did all I could and it still wasn’t enough.”

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”

Meet Oscar de León. Once upon a time, in elementary school, Oscar was a slick Dominican kid who seemed to have a typical life ahead of him. Then, around the time he hit puberty, Oscar gained a whole lot of weight, became awkward both physically and socially, and got deeply interested in things that made him an outcast among his peers (sci-fi novels, comics, Dungeons & Dragons, writing novels, etc.). A particularly unfortunate Dr. Who Halloween costume earns him the nickname Oscar Wao for the costume’s resemblance to another Oscar: playwright Oscar Wilde (Wao being a Dominican spin on the surname). His few friends are embarrassed by him, girls want nothing to do with him, and everywhere he goes Oscar finds nothing but derision and hostility. And he’s not the only person in his family suffering through life: his mother, a former beauty, has been ravaged by illness, bad love affairs, and worry regarding her two children; and his sister Lola, another intense beauty, has been cursed with a nomadic soul and her mother’s poor taste in men.

The kicker about the de León family? They just may be the victims of a bona fide curse (a particularly nasty one at that, called a fukú) as a result of their history with Rafael Trujillo, a former dictator of the Dominican Republic renowned for his brutality, and whose enemies uniformly met with disastrous ends one way or another (historical details about Trujillo and the history of his reign are scattered throughout the novel, a tidbit that may turn some off of the book, but rest assured that Díaz is so utterly entertaining a writer that they are a joy to read). The de Leóns are on a collision course with disaster, but can they break the curse before it’s too late?

“you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.”

Embroiled in all this mess is Yunior, our primary narrator and Oscar’s former college roommate (not to mention the philandering ex-boyfriend of Lola, the novel’s other narrator), whose experiences with the de León clan will haunt him for the rest of his life. His attempts to help Oscar become more popular fail, as do his tries to escape Oscar’s grasp. “These days,” he remarks at one point, “I have to ask myself: What made me angrier? That Oscar, the fat loser, quit, or that Oscar, the fat loser, defied me? And I wonder: What hurt him more? That I was never really his friend, or that I pretended to be?”

Oscar is far and away the most poignant character to come along in a great long while; in my book he’s every bit as memorable as Ignatius J. Reilly, Holden Caulfield, Randall Patrick McMurphy, and other literary giants. Furthermore, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a phenomenal novel that is hysterical, hypnotic, heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal parts (and quite often at the same time). The plot is a madcap high-wire act balanced with astonishing dexterity by Junot Díaz. If he has a misstep it is in the denouement, which is rather sudden and slightly lacking in clarity for an otherwise thorough novel. Nonetheless, I loved, loved, loved this book. And, naturally, I highly recommend it.
Grade: A(less)

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Nov 06, 2007 Myfanwy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh boy, is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao an interesting, challenging, illuminating book. At first, I wondered if I would be at a disadvantage as I do not get most of the allusions to comic books (though the Tolkien, etc, is not lost on me)--still knowing these things is not necessary to find what you need in this book. I also initially worried over the footnotes--would they be a chore? Would I end up skipping them? Nope and nope. From the beginning, I looked forward to them and what they...more

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Sep 26, 2007 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: bilingual tolkienheads?

Junot Diaz's swearing annoys me. Remember that guy in high school who smoked all the time, chainsmoked even, had been smoking since he was eleven, but it always just seemed really awkward and fake, like he was doing it to look cool or something, he didn't really enjoy smoking, and it didn't look right? Diaz swears like that guy smokes. It's fucking annoying.

I found the swearing in the first few pages of this novel distracting. However, I've been waiting for this book to come out for almost a dec...more

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Jul 27, 2008 RandomAnthony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You know those books that remind you why you like reading so much? The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is one of those books. Diaz’ whip-smart writing and brilliant characterizations pulsed on the page and his integration of Dominican history (which could have dragged this book down big-time) melded with Oscar’s story as naturally as if (and I suppose Diaz would say they are) one. You have to fight through some of the thickets of the intertwining plots but the effort is worthwhile. Did it deser...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
If you are just getting started reading the book, what are your initial impressions?	4	24	Jun 15, 2013 09:57am
Use of Spanish gimmicky? Gratuitous?	16	155	Jun 10, 2013 03:28pm
Literary Award Wi...: Oscar Wao - First Third	14	17	Jun 07, 2013 01:30pm
Literary Award Wi...: Oscar Wao - Last Third	2	12	Jun 04, 2013 06:58am
r/books: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao	7	13	May 27, 2013 07:13am
Literary Award Wi...: Oscar Wao - Second Third	1	4	May 16, 2013 07:49am

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