Customer Reviews

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a family saga about identity, love, loss, oppression, hexes, sexuality, and fate. Don't give up during the first 50 pages where Oscar, the fat science-fiction and fantasy aficionado Dominican-American in the ghetto, is introduced . . . it's the least interesting part of the book.

From there, you will be transported into the past and future lives of Oscar's sister, mother, aunts, grandparents, and college roommate. Those lives are, in part, shared to present the history of the evil, repressive regime of Trujillo and its heirs in the Dominican Republic. The stories shared in this book rival anything you've read about the disappeared ones in Argentina.

Any book with such a sad point needs a little levity to release the reader's emotions. Junot Diaz accomplishes that result by having Oscar be the most unRomeo-like Romeo you can imagine.

Beneath the story line, the book asks a classic question: How much should we suffer for love?

Oscar is in many ways a modern Don Quixote who is troubled by having sexual desires as well as platonic ones. The humor is more subdued, but the parallels are striking.

If all you know about the Dominican Republic is that great baseball players come from there, you'll be pleased with this story. It's sweet and sad at the same time.

If you don't know Spanish, keep a dictionary handy. You won't quite know what some of the references are otherwise.

Confusing and I didnt learn something positive
I couldnt read more after reading third-fourth of it.
I had great expectations :s

As the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, Junot Diaz falls into an elite category of authors that includes Jhumpa Lahiri, Jeffrey Eugenides and Richard Russo. I have to admit, though, that The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao fell short of the mark; while I appreciated artistry of the novel, I didn't particularly enjoy it. In the first 50 pages, Diaz introduces Oscar, the obese, nerdy and entirely unlikable protagonist. It's a dry beginning but the book does improve when it delves into the lives of Oscar's sister, mother, grandparents and friends. As well as a family saga, the novel chronicles the era of the oppressive reign of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. While the book successfully (and sometimes humourously) weaves together themes of identity, love, loss and fate, I found it gratuitously vulgar and uncaptivating. And as for its underlying question: how much suffering is love worth? I certainly wouldn't heed the advice of any of its characters!

I really love novels that intertwine different meta-narratives in order to tell the whole story.I think this is a feat that is not easily undertaken, and there are only a handful of authors that I've come across that can partake in storytelling from diverse perspectives, getting us to understand the internal logic of the different characters. I think Diaz has done this well. He does it all with a dash of edginess and dark humour, and incorporates history and culture into the story. He does shy away from any grandiose political statements, and talks about the horror of the reign of the Trujillo regime from a rather personalistic perspective (a la Trujillo was just a bad freakin' dude), as opposed to a more structural perspective, which is a bit annoying for those that know anything about the history of Latin American and US-propped dictatorships. I understand that a political statement was not his intention, though, although it did deal at length with racial relations.

While I enjoyed the meta-narratives and characterization of the book, oddly enough, I didn't dig on Oscar all that much. Someone else mentioned here that he was a stock character of the fat, science fiction-loving, introverted, sex/love-challenged variety, and I must agree. I had a hard time having any empathy for him, and read the book mostly for the other characters (I found his sister and especially his mother's stories interesting). When he was interactions with other characters, it's always in this obscure space-speak, variations of some middle-earth or extraterrestrial-like dialect. Who talks like this? Even geeks can relate more to people than this, no? Maybe Diaz thinks that he has un-stocked the stock character by combining two apparently contradictory identity traits: Loner, fat, game-less freak meets Dominicano (who are apparently renowned for their ability to procure punani). This might make him somewhat less cliché, but I still can't garner a whole lot of empathy for the dude. As the narrative changes, it is alternately told from a 1st person perspective (Oscar's sister, and Oscar's college roommate), and from a Greek chorus-like "we" perspective. Maybe it's because Oscar never gets to explain himself, but he just seems completely unable to relate to anyone, and Diaz doesn't really get into his head. He just kind of describes his life (which by and large consists of writing novels, and not getting laid) from the outside. It's hard to root for a character for whom you feel rather indifferent, and who has not been adequately dissected. We can understand why Lola (his sister) and Beli (his mom) are the way they are. I can't understand Oscar, and after reading, I was too annoyed with him to want to.

In fact, all the male characters in this book were underdeveloped in my opinion, and the female characters much more complex. From a male author, I'm not quite sure why this is, but it is. In any case, Diaz does a good job highlighting the rather schizophrenic identity to which diaspora gives rise, and I appreciated his humour, lack of pretension, diverse narratives as well as insight about race, and his ability to shed light on how people from the "old country" think. Would definitely recommend it.

Much of the content of this high-powered novel about the life and times of Oscar and his Dominican family has already been mentioned in other reviews, so I have decided to take a different approach in assessing its overall message. I offer the following observations as to how this novel struck me, aside from its entertainment value, as an important statement on modern life in the western world:
1) Diaz packs a lot of passion into this narrative. Love, fear, and hatred abound in spades. This is a very visceral story that lays bare the souls of some very hurting individuals who have had their emotions trampled on by some very cruel and self-centered males. Women and loners do not come off very well in this very machismo world of Dominican culture;
2) Diaz takes the introverted life of a young schlub named Oscar and encases it in the florid, turbulent environment of a sex-crazed world to achieve dramatic moments of tension, awkwardness and ongoing conflict leading to inevitable tragedy;
3) Diaz weaves a tortured story that takes the reader through several generations of unhappy history and over two very contrasting social landscapes. Ultimately, it is an accumulation of individual experiences from a haunted and tyrannical past that seem to be most influential in shaping the ambitions of this new generation of Dominicans now living in America, the land of the free;
4) Many of the characters are desperately searching for acceptance from others, knowing full well that the relationship they seek comes at a terrible price: the loss of their freedom to be themselves;
5) Diaz combines moments of tragedy, fantasy and heroism to achieve a tale expressing the individual's search for a real purpose in a world controlled by tyrants and cultural oppression;
6) Oscar's personal world, built on the fantastic concept of a Tolkien middle-earth, is one that cannot be sustained because it directly clashes with the more aggressive values of the alpha culture around him;
7) Overall, I would classify this novel as suited for anyone who has a desire to discover how certain cultural dynamics work within ethnic communities. This novel is so much more than just a picture of Oscar's refusal to conform to the expectations of others. It actually explores the lives of those others and draws an interesting conclusion that I believe goes to the heart of this highly energized story.

It was a very enjoyable read and I highly recommend it to others. It grabbed my attention right from the first pages and held it until the end. Very interesting story, lots of humour and tragedy. I also found the tragic history of the Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic fascinating.

A tragic but richly written novel about identity, discrimination, injustice, torture, and death but the moral of the story is about love. Oscar Wao is the novel's tragic protagonist who ultimately dies but fulfills his dream of being in love and being loved back. I think in one way or another, everyone can relate to the characters in the book.

Many people claim that the contemporary novel has lost its literary imagination, they obviously have not yet read Junot Díaz. The book explores the depth of the human condition in a way that is complex, yet completely understandable.

As a disclaimer, the mechanics of the book do make it difficult at times to navigate, especially for non-Spanish readers and those with no background in Latin America and specifically the Dominican Republic. However, Díaz includes extensive background footnotes, which are essential to understanding the historical context. In other words, you must read them or the story won't make sense.

Overall, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" is an outstanding read, well-deserving of the Pulitzer Prize, and sure to be an instant classic.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (Riverhead Books 2007)

Brilliant, acerbic and filled with the love of revenge that writers are famous for: revenge for being black, being poor, being Dominican, and revenge for being smarter than the monsters who pervert the course of the world, both politically and personally. (Would that every dictator great and small could achieve such an excoriating epitaph as the DR's Trujillo does in this book.) It's also filled with love--just plain love. A wondrous book, not brief, with an irreverence you can't buy these days. It's the real thing, the genuine article: inspired, comic, brilliant and moving. It's also grateful. It pisses in the face of the world and then says `Thank you.' Oscar Wao is a fatboy nerd who wants to be JRR Tolkien and marry J-Lo (or the next nearest best thing.) His tale is probably far more common than we imagine, because he's exactly the kind of person who gets noticed last, and always too late. Not this time, however, for this book plants him dead centre in the spotlight, where he belongs. Think Zadie Smith before she got all awards-conscious, Gabriel García-Marquez in his finest moments, Richard Pryor in some of his zaniest, and you have Oscar Wao's life as told by Dominican immigrant Díaz. Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (Riverhead Books 2007)

Brilliant, acerbic and filled with the love of revenge that writers are famous for: revenge for being black, being poor, being Dominican, and revenge for being smarter than the monsters who pervert the course of the world, both politically and personally. (Would that every dictator great and small could achieve such an excoriating epitaph as the DR's Trujillo does in this book.) It's also filled with love--just plain love. A wondrous book, not brief, with an irreverence you can't buy these days. It's the real thing, the genuine article: inspired, comic, brilliant and moving. It's also grateful. It pisses in the face of the world and then says `Thank you.' Oscar Wao is a fatboy nerd who wants to be JRR Tolkien and marry J-Lo (or the next nearest best thing.) His tale is probably far more common than we imagine, because he's exactly the kind of person who gets noticed last, and always too late. Not this time, however, for this book plants him dead centre in the spotlight, where he belongs. Think Zadie Smith before she got all awards-conscious, Gabriel García-Marquez in his finest moments, Richard Pryor in some of his zaniest, and you have Oscar Wao's life as told by Dominican immigrant Díaz. Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

Let me say, before I begin here, that I had very high expectations going into this novel. Not because it won the Pulitzer, but because a friend whose reading habits I respect highly, wouldn't shut up about this book until I read it.

Now that I've read it, I have to say I was disappointed. The book is split into a few narratives. One is Oscar's narrative, an obese nerd whose only goal is to obtain the love of a girl. Others are the history of Oscar's family, including his mother and grandmothers background, and also the view point of Oscar's sister. Much of the book is narrated by a person unknown until a certain point in the book, when it becomes clear who is telling Oscar's story.

There are parts of this book I really enjoyed. Mainly the family history parts. I thought they were fantastically written, and employed a good use of history and fiction, something I have a soft spot for when I read. However, I found the character of Oscar to be annoying and easily dismissed. His personality as a Star Wars type nerd with eating problems and no luck with girls is one that I have seen a billion times in literature, TV and film, and this book does nothing really different for the stock character. He whines and complains and is hopeless, and I stopped caring about him halfway through the book, only kept reading to get back to the story of his family and the narrative of his sister, which was infinitely more interesting.

I suppose the book won the Pulitzer because it meshes styles, plays with language, narrative voice, history and fiction, and employs trendy little things like footnotes to relate parts of the story. Perhaps if I hadn't disliked Oscar so much the book would have sat better in my mind.