Jenni's review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz

Jenni's review

rating:

recommended for: modern lit enthusiasts, Ignatius J. Reilley fans, spanglish lovers

status: Read in June, 2008

There's a good reason why this book has received so many accolades: it's a strong and thoroughly arresting story and it's riotously entertaining to read. There's nothing hackneyed or tried and true about this immigration saga --- the de leon family and their fuku (curse)arrive in New Jersey from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in the years after Trujillo's (or li'l fuckface as our narrator prefers to call him) regime destroyed and desecrated families, land, and any hope of a safe democracy in the island nation. Oscar, our overweight, D and D playing, Dune reading, Tolkien loving, anti-hero is simultaneously annoying and lovable on his quest for love and sex. He lacks the mojo that other Domincano men are apparently born with and this is his central conlict throughout the work...Will Oscar get laid?

The book plunges, without the usual sentimentality for novels dealing with dictatorships, into Oscar's mother's (Beli's) past as perhaps a living embodiment of the fuku thrown on th...more There's a good reason why this book has received so many accolades: it's a strong and thoroughly arresting story and it's riotously entertaining to read. There's nothing hackneyed or tried and true about this immigration saga --- the de leon family and their fuku (curse)arrive in New Jersey from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in the years after Trujillo's (or li'l fuckface as our narrator prefers to call him) regime destroyed and desecrated families, land, and any hope of a safe democracy in the island nation. Oscar, our overweight, D and D playing, Dune reading, Tolkien loving, anti-hero is simultaneously annoying and lovable on his quest for love and sex. He lacks the mojo that other Domincano men are apparently born with and this is his central conlict throughout the work...Will Oscar get laid?

The book plunges, without the usual sentimentality for novels dealing with dictatorships, into Oscar's mother's (Beli's) past as perhaps a living embodiment of the fuku thrown on the de leon family. An orphan because of the dictator's distrust of her prominent and wealthy father (Trujillo tortured her father and killed him for a benign joke he made), she grows into a sex object extraordinaire, wanted by Trujillo's gangstas as well as the local dentist and all men in between, it seems.

Oscar's sister Lola get her time, too.

The most arresting aspect of this work, however, isn't this change in perspectives and stories; it's not the self-consciousness of the narration technique; it is, quite simply, the primary narrator's voice. Mostly told from the vantage point of Junior, Oscar's college rommate and friend of Lola's, we get a barrage of graceful spanglish and dazzling slang that really make this book memorable. As I was reading, I felt like Junior was my Latino best friend recalling, over beers, the entire story of the de leon fuku. Junior's narrative voice is cool, unnerving, prejudicial, honest, spirited, and intelligent in a completely unpretentious way.

Read this novel for the story of Oscar and his fate, for the latino tradition of magical realism, read it to find out more about Trujillo and the histoy of those places schools never teach us, but definitely read this novel for Diaz's brilliant narration and for a love of his allusion and slang infused language. ...less

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Jenni's review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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