The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | 
 enlarge | Author: Junot Diaz
Publisher: Riverhead
Category: EBooks
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $4.01 (29%)
Rating:  391 reviews
Sales Rank: 181
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Publication Date: September 6, 2007
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
This is the long-awaited first novel from one of the most original and memorable writers working today. Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim. Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 386 more reviews...
 a modern hero's journey June 29, 2009
SK (santa monica)
I began this book with little expectation. I did not know it won the author a Pulitzer. I did not expect to enjoy the book nor did I expect to dislike it. This was our book group selection so I dutifully plunged into it, at first wondering in what strange world did I fall.
From the start, Diaz' voice stands out; I loved his writing, his use of words. The story started slow, but, damn, the book grew on me. The magic is that this book still has a hold on me after I've finished it.
At the most basic level, this is the story of the ultra geek morbidly obese socially inappropriate Dominican Oscar and his attempt to make a difference in his life, really at its heart a modern hero's journey, as told by an omniscient narrator who strangely morphs as we progress until we find it is a `he' called Yunior.
But to fully know Oscar, it turns out I have to go inside and take my own personal journey to find my own missing spaces in my history and as well as my missing knowledge of the history of humankind.
Diaz, through Oscar, while reminding me once more of our inhumanity to our own kind, also celebrates that inner spirit that shines through despite it all.
More deliciously, this is a subversive novel politically attuned to our modern world, underscored by the presence of the Dominican dictator Trujillo, who amazingly is not even a character in the novel. What Diaz tells us about the psychopathic Trujillo and his influence on his country through Oscar and his family, somehow serves as poignant and powerful reminders about how many of us came to America, as immigrants, as well as throwing light onto the dark side of history: genocide, the slavery, the racism, life in poverty, torture.
Geekdom, represent! June 28, 2009
Cynical (College)
Wow. Just wow. That was my first reaction to finishing the book. It was totally unexpected, completely different and wholly intriguing. It was not without its flaws, but I will address those in turn.
First, I have to say that I was surprised to hear that this was the pick for the Pulitzer. But upon pondering what I'd read, I decided that ultimately, it was a good decision. Why? Oscar is no hero. Nor anti-hero. Not even an everyman. He's a poor, overweight, sad, lonely geek. Nothing goes right in his life. Not one thing. The 'curse,' or 'fuku' if you will, has followed his family for generations. And the reader wonders, and as Oscar's life and the lives of his sister and mother unfold, you acquire insight into the true meaning of fate and humanity. The references in English (but might as well have been Quenya or Klingon to some) and Spanish might have been difficult and a deterrent to some, but as a student of Spanish for many years and a self-professed geek (though I retain some dignity, I promise), I thought that the interjections were quite necessary and hilarious. However, had I been unfamiliar with them, I probably would have had some frustration. Even so, that alone would not have deterred me. The book in general requires a certain taste--probably an acquired one.
Some things, I'll admit, were irritating, which was why I gave it a 4 star rating. Once you get to know the character of Oscar, it seemed and odd juxtaposition that the author would throw in so many trivial 'homeboy was this.' I didn't like that. That didn't particularly add to the quality of the book, but rather made things more difficult to understand. Also, the footnotes became detracting, especially when they became longer than the paragraph on the page. However, I will add that they were fascinating and pertinent, but they could have been better integrated.
Overall, this book was an eye-opener. I wouldn't recommend it everyone, but anyone who wants a book to be more than a simple read, who is willing to engage in an active relationship with the characters will enjoy this. It needs to be approached with an open mind--nay, a whole new mindset. While not perfect, it was refreshing.
Such Language! June 25, 2009
Roger Brunyate (Baltimore, MD)
The most amazing thing about this amazing book is that it won the Pulitzer Prize. The prize that has been awarded to such American stylists as Saul Bellow, John Updike, and Marilynne Robinson, now given to a novel written in a language that few of them would recognize? Yet the Pulitzer was also awarded to Toni Morrison, who virtually invented her own language in BELOVED, to Michael Chabon, who plunged deep into the world of American comics in THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, to Jeffrey Eugenides, who channeled the teenage sexual confusion in MIDDLESEX, and to Oscar Hijuelos, who sang Spanish-inflected blues to his native Cuba in THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE. There are elements of all these things in OSCAR WAO, so perhaps the Pulitzer is not such a stretch after all, except that Junot Diaz takes everything that much farther.
For one thing, the book is interlarded throughout with Spanish words and phrases, resulting in exchanges like the following:
--- She was very guapa, I said casually.
--- Abuela snorted. Guapa soy yo. Your mother was a diosa. But so cabeza dura. When she was your age we never got along.
--- I didn't know that, I said.
--- She was cabeza dura and I was . . . exigente.
At least this passage uses more or less normal Spanish, but elsewhere the language is regional, street slang, or as often as not obscene. Yet Diaz combines it with English in such a way that you don't need to know what everything means in order to be swept away:
--- She was one of those golden mulatas that French-speaking Caribbeans call chabines, that my boys call chicas de oro; she had snarled, apocalyptic hair, copper eyes, and was one whiteskinned relative away from jaba."
Oscar de Leon is the son of a Dominican refugee from the Trujillo regime, living in Paterson, New Jersey. A science fiction, Tolkien, and fantasy games addict, he is super-intelligent, grossly overweight, a total nerd, and completely incapable of fulfilling his dream of getting a girlfriend. The story is told partly by Oscar's onetime roommate Yunior (aka Diaz), who has no such problems and who has an on-and-off relationship with Oscar's sister Lola, and partly by Lola herself. The present-day story in America alternates with chapters in the Dominican Republic from the forties through the sixties, which is a gangster nightmare stemming from the example of the psychopathic dictator himself. Diaz changes voices like a ventriloquist, writing now like a teenage girl, now a street hoodlum, now plunging into noir like a Latino Dashiell Hammett, now compiling mock-erudite footnotes in the manner of David Foster Wallace.
But always his writing is both an exhilaration and a challenge. Whether you will enjoy it or not depends upon your tolerance for Spanish slang and ubiquitous sexuality. The reward is getting to know a slice of history, a vibrant immigrant culture, and a hero who, for all his faults, still manages to arouse our sympathy.
 The best? Really? June 25, 2009
R. Hamel (NH, US)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Is this truly the best novel of the year worthy of the Pulitzer? I hope not, or our literary tastes are in dire straights. This is a book edgy and fast not because of plot or characters or ideas, but instead purely language, tossing in an admittedly impressive abundance of Spanish, Dominican history and culture, and D&D et. al. references. That said, I'm left like that lady of long ago in the Wendy's commercials, screaming "Where's the beef!?!?" There's simply no meat to this novel, once you get by the creative and vibrant voice of the narrator.
Love the writing, but the story made me weary of reading June 24, 2009
Craig D. Aron (San Diego , CA USA)
I loved Diaz's writing. The language and the Spanglish added something special to the story. I loved Oscar Wao and I was compelled to see what happened to him. I feel like I had to wade through long sections about his mother and sister to get there. These were sections that did add as much to the story as I think we intended. In the end, I still enjoyed the book. It is very easy to read.
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