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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | 
| Author: Junot Diaz
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $7.95
You Save: $6.05 (43%)
Rating:  263 reviews
Sales Rank: 41
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 1594483299
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594483295
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2007: It's been 11 years since Junot Diaz's critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake. This was the most dynamic, entertaining, and achingly heartfelt novel I've read in a long time. My head is still buzzing with the memory of dozens of killer passages that I dog-eared throughout the book. The rope-a-dope narrative is funny, hip, tragic, soulful, and bursting with desire. Make some room for Oscar Wao on your bookshelf--you won't be disappointed. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Product Description
The most talked aboutand praisedfirst novel of 2007, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd whofrom 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 fukúa curse that has haunted Oscars family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao<./I> opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevereand risk it allin the name of love.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 258 more reviews...
 Be patient, it warms up February 3, 2008
98 out of 103 found this review helpful
The story opens by exploring the life of a Oscar, a promising young Dominican child growing up in New Jersey who morphs into an overweight, unpopular way-out-there nerd who is desperate to lose his virginity. The story goes on to explore the lives of Oscar, Oscar's mother (orphaned, faced class & race discrimination, unrequited love, assault), sister (angst to leave Mother's persistent negativism and see the world) and Mother's family (persecuted by Dictator). The first half of the book was challenging to read as the author uses footnotes and many Spanish language phrases that are not translated (and frustratingly so...and perhaps herein lies the not-so subliminal message to me that I need to learn Spanish). These language challenges, coupled with the weaving back and forth from the present to the past and between multiple characters made the storyline challenging to follow and impacted my enjoyment of the story. That being said, I appreciated author's integration of the political, social and economic history of the Dominican Republic and how the environment shaped many of the lives of the generations who migrated to the U.S. Hang in there as the book warms up at p. 150 and beyond where the main characters develop very nicely.
Worth the wait..almost September 13, 2007
74 out of 89 found this review helpful
I was delighted to learn that Junot Diaz's novel was finally being published. Like so many others, I wanted more when I finished Drown 9 years ago and even read it again when he published it as Negocios. I bought Oscar Wao at my first opportunity and finished it last night before bed. It was what I had been waiting for. Diaz's voice is so original and his characters so interesting that I nearly zoomed through the book. I say "nearly" because I kept hitting speed bumps in the form of his liberal use of the "n-word". I know that the word is a part of the cultural milieu of the characters he has created and I have heard all the arguments about reclamation and empowerment. Still, I find the word jarring and distracting. It still rings of self-loathing and resignation to my middle-class moreno ears. The fact that Dominican Americans of African descent actually do often refer to themselves that way would surely make Trujillo smile.
Once I got past the hated epithet, and I did do so, I found that I loved the novel. I came to care about the characters, each of whom felt authentic. The footnotes were a great addition both for what they taught and for the social and cultural references Diaz chose not to footnote. I found myself grabbing for my Spanish-English dictionary more than once in spite of my own passable proficiency in the language. Still, I was forced live with the fact that there were phrases and references I didnt understand. That, I think, was the point. Junot Diaz's characters live in a world of blended languages, amalgamated ethnicities and blurred cultural distinctions. Sharp contrasts and right angles are dull and worse, they are lies. Oscar Wao forces us to deal with the fuzziness and twisted lines and it was great fun. I sincerely hope there is more of this perspective to come. I would even wait 10 more years for it. But, I hope I wont have to.
 Wao as in WOW! October 17, 2007
44 out of 48 found this review helpful
Dude can write. In fact, this book is one of the most original that I've come across in a long time.
Like the layers of an onion, Diaz peels back the layers of years to reveal the back history of Oscar and his sister Lola. And what a history it is! The Banana Curtain is unveiled and the horrors of Trujillo -- the raging narcissist and despoiler of women -- are unflinchingly revealed, creating shudders of revulsion and flashes of understanding in this reader.
Junot Diaz creates a language and a tempo unlike any I've read before, peppered with Spanish colloquialisms, street talk, and video game terminology. Somehow, though, it works -- and works beautifully -- even if you don't know an "hola" from an "adios" or have never played a video game in your life (like this reader.)
I will not soon forget Oscar Wao, the 300+ pound romantic, Lola, Yunior, or his mother and the Gangster and his ill-fated grandparents. The book is compulsively readable. For all of those who say that "the novel is dead", I say: read Junot Diaz.
A Family's History of the Dominican Republic January 8, 2008
40 out of 43 found this review helpful
I loved Diaz's short story collection Drown, and like almost everyone else who read it, have been eagerly waiting years for his next book. Now, something like a decade later, Diaz brings a character from that collection (Yunior) back to narrate the family history of his Rutgers roommate Oscar (who is also the brother of Yunior's sometime girlfriend). This tale begins with Oscar's grandfather and ends up encompassing quite a bit of the modern history of the Dominican Republic. And although the story hopscotches back and forth in time and location quite a bit, Diaz has complete command of his narrative.
To be fair, sometimes the story feels more like "A People's History of the Dominican Republic." than a novel about a geeky kid from New Jersey. Not that this is a bad thing -- Diaz manages to get at the political, economic, and psychological forces that brought so many Dominican immigrants to the U.S . over the last fifty years via captivating and dextrous prose. The dominant theme of this multigenerational story is the "fuku" (curse) Oscar's family lives under. (Of course, as Yunior points out, every Dominican family believes itself to be cursed by the fuku americanus, a curse brought by European colonialists which has turned the Caribbean Eden into a despotic prison to be escaped.)s The fuku first hits Oscar's grandfather, an upper-class doctor undone by the rise of the Trujillo thugocracy (equal to that of Saddam Hussein in horror inflicted on its subjects). His daughter (Oscar's mother) faces her own tragedy due to the fuku, and is the bridge between life in the D.R. and life in America, as she escapes to New York. Her children, Oscar and Lola, represent the generation born and bred in the U.S. -- both connected to, and apart from their Dominican heritage.
The story thus enables Diaz to examine how nationality, culture, and language become more and more blended over generations (non-Spanish speakers should note that the book is full of untranslated Spanish words and phrases, which can be a little frustrating at times). The segments of the book set in the D.R. under the Trujillo regime tend to be a great deal more compelling than the contemporary storyline. The story of Oscar's mother's childhood and teen years are far more colorful and dramatic than the on-again, off-again romance between Yunior and Oscar's sister Lola, and are definitely more interesting than Oscar's own geeky problems. Fat, obsessive, and devoid of social skills, Oscar makes it hard for people (including the reader) to sympathize with him and his dual dreams of becoming the "Dominican Tolkein" and losing his virginity. The final section of the book, in which Oscar pursues love with the trademark oblivious obsession that has made him an outcast, is pretty much straightforward classical doomed love, and thus the least interesting and convincing.
The overall effect of the book is a good deal more sad and depressing than I had expected. Although the title and opening chapter alert the reader to the brevity of Oscar's life, for some reason, I hadn't expected it to unfold quite as pathetically and tragically as it does. Similar tragedies unfold in the previous generations, and by the end of the book, there is little consolation of any kind to be found. Diaz writes with so much compassion for his characters that one would be hard pressed not to be affected. However, the sexual themes that pervade all the storylines act as somewhat of a life-affirming counterbalance to all the death and disappointment. And above all, there is the sheer exuberance and dexterity of the prose, which makes the book well worth reading from a purely stylistic or technical perspective. Not exactly a masterpiece, but well worth reading.
 This won a Pulitzer? October 30, 2008
35 out of 39 found this review helpful
Just finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and here are some quick thoughts:
- Diaz's writing gives one a sense that he is more concerned about what other writers think of his work than what readers think. Every sentence and turn of phrase feels over-work shopped and over-edited as Diaz tries way too hard to be clever. When he is unable to decide on a single pop culture reference, he rattles off five. This makes for choppy narration and a story without flow.
- In addition to the multitude of pop-culture and science fiction references Diaz also includes as "gadgets" extensive footnotes and lots of Spanish/Spanglish. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but overall it's too much distraction. I often found myself having to reread chunks of the actual story because a page long footnote made me forget what was happening. And while I've read Tolkien, Watchmen and have seen the movie Akira, there were many references I did not get or did not find all that additive to the book. I also speak a decent amount of Spanish and yet found myself wondering if I was missing something important because I did not understand ~20% of the Spanish in the book. If you're going to include huge footnotes, consider throwing some translation in there, too.
- Putting my issues with style aside, the story itself presents some problems for me. The characters tend towards caricatures and Oscar in particular lacks depth. He's basically a Dominican version of the Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons. The narrative is choppy (intentionally in some respects) but Diaz does not do enough to give us a sense of magnitude or structure at the beginning of the book. Not knowing where you're going in a story can be fine sometimes, but the problem here was I also did not care.
- Diaz's presence is also too strong at the end, where it is clear he had a hard time. Instead of choosing an ending, he basically gives us four, resulting in the dilution of all of them.
Maybe I'm too insular in my tastes just as the Nobel committee thinks many Americans are in their writing. But to think of this book and last year's winner, The Road, as being remotely on par with each other makes me cringe.
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