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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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It's an AMAZING book!I won't ruin the ending but your nerd heart will melt - and it explores a side of nerdery you don't often see - multicultural nerd status.
I'd be happy to read this again and discuss it. In fact, I could do it now!
So Oscar is a Dominican Republic guy who was born in America, but there's a stereotype that Dominican dudes can't be nerds. Poor Oscar basically suffers for years because of this, but I won't spoil any more.
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Hoping that the audio version is good too. The library just delivered it this week. Now I just need time to read it.
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Really, really enjoyed this book! The characters were totally believable, even the narrator. Especially the narrator! I loved the narrative voice in the story. There were times when the characters were really frustrating but at the same time it was so believable that there were no incredible acts of heroics. Beli not fighting The Gangster even after what his wife's thugs did to her, Beli being such a difficult woman, Oscar who was so helpless up until the end. They were all so flawed and it was a little frustrating to watch them attempt to self-destruct but at the same time it was very real.
The historical footnotes were a little distracting but it was so great to read about so many things that I never knew about. I knew a little about the history of the DR before this book but not a lot, and it was really fascinating to read about it from the point of view of someone who had an opinion instead of just a history book.
This book is essentially more human than even Evangelion was - for one thing this book actually redeems humanity by not wishing for the entire species being wiped out by an apocalypse. It's rare in prize winning literature to see a killer hook that keeps even young people not used to reading Pulitzer Prize winning fiction reading.It is also a useful text for documenting the sorrows of ethnic nerds. Being "White and Nerdy" as Weird Al puts it is hard enough, but throw in Spanish gender roles and it gets messy. I learned a lot from this book, mainly that the 1970s to 1990s were a hard time for nerds of all races. But the only part I didn't like was where Oscar finds himself not changing with the times, dismissing the nerd culture my generation grew up with.
I guess it's supposed to reflect how he still feels out of place in the world, but LEAVE MAGIC THE GATHERING OUTTA THIS! The ante rule was removed in later editions, but at least it was historically accurate enough for the time period to say Oscar didn't like it because he lost all his cards in Ante.
I also find the depiction of women in this fairly reasonable because on one hand you have the guys being sexist pigs and you have the women of that culture finding ways to be wily and be matriarchs of their families. Society and Culture was possibly the best subject I ever took in high school, lazy slacker students who thought it was boring be DAMNED!
I haven't read this, or anything else this month, and probably won't.
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fuk -- a curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.
I'll be honest and say that I don't know anything about this book, but everyone seems to speak pretty highly of it.