The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in Read a book from each country

Jun 22, 2024 Rachel rated it it was ok

Shelves: political, set-in-1990s, audiobooks, scribd, around-the-world-challenge-2024, 52-book-club-2024, family-saga, set-in-1950s, family-drama, misogyny

This is the Pulitzer Prize winning story by Junot Díaz who was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, featuring geek and social outcast Oscar de León and the Fukœ or curse that afflicts his family.

The story begins with the woes of overweight, fantasy and game-obsessed Oscar and his frustrated attempts to get a girlfriend. Oscar tries everything, but the female sex either view him with complete contempt or as strictly friend material only. The book then moves to the life of his ...more

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Sep 21, 2014 Molly Ison rated it it was ok

Shelves: book-club

2.5 stars. Back-story and history lose out to a muddled jumble of authorial intent.

I have three problems with the "nerdiness". First and worst, the author's put-on geek culture name-dropping feels absolutely fake. I went to school with a lot of nerds. I work with a lot of nerds (I wish you could tag people in these things). I have a lot of friends right here on Goodreads who read SFF. NO ONE TALKS LIKE THIS. And in the late-middle, it feels like the author simply forgot to do it for a while. It 2.5 stars. Back-story and history lose out to a muddled jumble of authorial intent.

I have three problems with the "nerdiness". First and worst, the author's put-on geek culture name-dropping feels absolutely fake. I went to school with a lot of nerds. I work with a lot of nerds (I wish you could tag people in these things). I have a lot of friends right here on Goodreads who read SFF. NO ONE TALKS LIKE THIS. And in the late-middle, it feels like the author simply forgot to do it for a while. It feels like pandering. (I'm also not extremely sure about the Dominican slang part either - I'm suspicious of reverse code-switching, but I'm not going any further down that line of thought). Secondly, if you're not a fan of all this stuff, it means that there are two "foreign" cultures to make sense of. The important one of Dominican history that I was trying to follow and the one I didn't care about with Dr. Who analogies. Analogies/similes only work if you understand at least one half. Third and subjectively, I HATE HATE HATE when an author chooses to refer to a historical figure by an invented nickname (the Failed Cattle Thief for Trujillo. Valente calls Stalin The Wizard with the Mustache in Deathless). I know this is something that won't bother most people, but it's like nails on the chalkboard for me for no particularly good reason.

Ultimately, I never got into the same rhythm as the author. I found the narrator unconvincing, Oscar unlikeable (I don't need characters to be likeable, but it's off-putting when the author means for the character to garner sympathy that you don't have) and felt an emotional distance from the older generation of characters - fascination instead of empathy. And I feel like the success of this book was dependent upon the ability to empathize with at least some of the characters. Halfway through, I felt like I could simply put this down and walk away and not care how it ended. I'd have been more interested if the entire book was written in Lola's voice.

One star for making me more interested in Dominican history (but ultimately I'd have rather read a non-fiction account). One star because I liked Lola. And half a star for general coherence, because although I realize that the star ratings are arbitrary, I try to reserve one star reviews for things that I both didn't like and were horribly written. (Although I've made exceptions when I felt really angry about finishing a book, as with Kavalier and Clay, the moral here apparently being that what the Pulitzer committee and what I look for in a book are apparently entirely opposite). ...more

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Nov 12, 2017 Ilona Stefanova rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Обичам книги, които разказват семейни истории/саги. Обичам и книги, които разказват за страната си, за манталитета на хората си. Обичам книги, от които научаваш нещо. "Краткият чуден живот на Оскар Уао" е точно такава книга - непретинциозна, интересна, семейна история. Едва ли има много книги у нас (изобщо ако има друга), от които можеш да научиш нещо повече за Доминиканската Република, за нейната история, за нейният народ и за фуку! Страхотни препратки към фентъзи и фантастика жанра, и МНОООГО ...more

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Jan 10, 2018 Livia Terra rated it liked it

Shelves: traveling-the-world-through-books

I like this book, but I not as much as I think I would do (yeah, high expectation is a bitch). The story of a nerd guy from DR is interesting and full of references to nerd culture, like sci-fi, comics and fantasy books. I guess I've missed some of them (maybe most of them? I got Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that's all I can remember). There's the main narrator, but some parts are told by other characters, and I really loved the notes about DR history. It's interesting that the author uses Spanish te ...more

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