The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in Constant Reader

Mar 30, 2009 Barbara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

This is an excellent audiobook production of both Oscar Wao and the collection of short stories entitled Drown. The narrators, Jonathan Davis and Staci Snell, do an outstanding job. I especially appreciated the accents and the pronunciation of the Spanish words. I've been an admirer of Díaz' short stories for a while. But, I realized, listening to both of these, that the triumph in Oscar Wao is that the personalities are a little bit outside the neighborhood ones, the kids who don't fit. It seem ...more

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May 29, 2015 Mary Ellen rated it really liked it

Shelves: mary-ellen-s-books-2015

This has been on my TBR since it was published. I had worked for a while in a program serving a heavily Dominican community, yet knew little about the Dominican Republic. Reading this book showed me I didn't know little, I knew nothing.

Not that I don't take the historical aspects of this tale, in the exaggerated, compelling but not wholly believable voice of the #1 Dominican player in mid-Jersey, with a few grains of salt...but it did teach me a bit about the fraught history of the DR. (We invad ...more

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Mar 29, 2009 Kirsten rated it liked it · review of another edition

I loved reading this book - the time sequence of the telling and how Díaz weaves in the Dominican Republic.

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Sep 10, 2011 Sara rated it really liked it

Some brilliant stuff here. Very sad, and very hilarious.

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Jun 01, 2009 Linda rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, recommended

This book continues the trend of multiple narrators that assures something for every reader. The story line holds my interest. The details about the Dominican Republic inject an additional narrator, a history teacher grounded in the vernacular.

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