[BWF Extra] [Steeplechase] The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz - 2 stars

[Linda C]

I like the kind of story that follows the lives of several characters to develop the story of the main character. This happens here, with following Oscar's early life, his mother's life in Santo Domingo, DR, his sister, Lola's, and his grandfather's under Trujillo in DR. Then back to Oscar. However, the characters themselves are not endearing. The best story, though brutal, was the grandfather's, who tried to save his young daughter from being noticed by Trujillo, who routinely took and raped young girls.

Oscar is overweight, into sci-fi and comics and looking to be the next Tolkien. But most of all he wants to be laid. And he whines about it a lot. It seems the Dominican's main desires are to get laid and be beautiful. You either are both or you're not and if you're not then you get angry or whine. If you are, you take advantage of your assets and don't care how it affects others. Oscar is one of the unfortunate. He can't seem to get his act together, grow up and take advantage of what he has. The novel has some supernatural elements that work with the superstitious nature of the culture. This curse/fuku is highlighted in each story and is supposed to be what is behind Oscar's problems. I just didn't believe it.

Another frustrating thing for me was the use of the long sentences in Spanish that were thrown out to explain a scene or give an aside. You couldn't get what he meant by context. It just didn't work. I could only understand some things by using a translator tool and some of the slang used wasn't in the tool. Not an author I will be following.

[Hannah]

Linda C wrote: "I like the kind of story that follows the lives of several characters to develop the story of the main character. This happens here, with following Oscar's early life, his mother's life in Santo Do..."

I can't really remember this but very well, but I think I liked this a bit more than you, though mainly Lin-Manuel Miranda was the narrator, and he was excellent at keeping me engaged.