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 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
Language: English (Published)
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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| Customer Reviews:
 Wow Wao! June 24, 2009
M. Bailey (New Jersey, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When I began reading this I didn't expect to finish it. The angst of a teenage boy, told in crude language and sprinkled liberally with Spanish slang and idioms, didn't appeal to me at all. However, since it won a Pulitzer and has been widely praised I decided to read a few chapters before closing it, and I'm so glad I did.
It's weird to say this in light of what I wrote above, but this is one beautifully written book. The language is lilting, and the dialogue so natural the characters jump out at the reader. It's easy to imagine this read aloud. The time jumps are a little hard to follow, probably because I know little of Dominican history. Otherwise, my overall reaction: WOW!
Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao June 24, 2009
A Novel Menagerie (Huntington Beach)
This book review, I am certain, is doomed to disappoint. But, January's lucky streak of awesome books has now been cursed by the Fuku' of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
This book is the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Winner. Do you think it's just me? Do I expect too much out of award winning books?
Let's start with the story lines. This book is a compilation of the stories of the lives several family members originating in the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo). The reader, eventually, gets to understand the lives of a Doctor Cabral, his wife, their children, and grandchildren. In addition to them, many other characters are introduced and experienced by the readers. The lives of these characters are entwined with the life Cabral Family. The one thing that I can say about this book is that there is no lack of characters in this story. In fact, there are so many supporting characters and different viewpoints, that I was constantly flipping back in the book to understand who it was that I was reading about.
Let's move onto Oscar Wao as he did get the "title" role. Oscar is the grandson of Doctor Cabral, Son of Beli (a mother suffering with the ways of her only unruly daughter in addition to breast cancer), Brother to Lola (that unruly daughter), Nephew to La Inca (old school lady who raised Beli after her parents' deaths), and Friend to Yunior (a very horny man in love with Lola). Confused? That's okay... I was too. Oscar has been dealt the unfortunate hand of a weight problem topped with a lovely case of chronic acne. Pobre! Other than a brief time in his childhood, this poor dude never made it with the ladies. And, when I say "made it," that includes even a decent make-out session. I guess 300+ lbs. will do that to you. He loses himself in science fiction, fantasy, writing, and typical nerd activities (D&D, etc.). However, Oscar is a true romantic. When he falls in love, it's hard and he does not bounce back well when the rejection hits. His life is one cut out of a Greek Tragedy. After the reader gets to meet Oscar, he is led to read about Lola, the hot-headed, strong-willed sister.
Lola and her mother, Deli, do not get along at all! The fighting that these two experience is incomprehensible to me. But, they do come from a different culture then I did... and, then... there is the Fuku'. From Lola and her teenage hardships, love dramas, and strife, we move onto the very sad life of her mom, Deli. I really did enjoy reading the story of Deli's past. It was gripping, exotic and tragic. Moving on... we follow Oscar and Lola through their experience into and during the college years. While the reader is taken there, there are side travels into the lives of La Inca, Abelard, and Yunior. Now, it would take me nearly a book to get into who they are and why they are important. Did I mention this book was complex?
So... this book accompanies these characters on their travels back and forth between Santo Domingo and The United States of America. I cannot say that this is a book with much positive happening to these characters, but not all books are written to be such. I mean... look at the previous year's Pulitzer Prize winner... The Road. Nothing positive happens there, either. OK... so... a heavy book, an intricate book, and A WELL WRITTEN BOOK... how the heck do I review you? Let me give you the skinny about what makes this book hard for me to review:
This book is heavily footnoted with historical facts and explanations of people-tales-beliefs for the reader to understand the metaphors in the book. The footnotes are, in most cases, extremely lengthy. And, since the history of this region and history in general are not to strong points of mine, this was highly distracting and frustrating for me. However, these footnotes are very important to the understanding of the story and, at times, fascinating to read. But, it did create a lot of back and forth for me in reading.
I do read a good amount of Spanish, however I struggled with the vocabulary in this book. At one point I thought that I'd highlight and look-up. There were so many words that I plainly gave up on that notion. Good thing is, it didn't take away that much comprehension of the story... I hope!
The book is written almost in the fashion of short stories that are stringed together. However, rather than a straight line.... like a fishing line... it's like crocheted together. The story of this family is not linear. Now, I can't decide on whether or not I would have preferred it to be linear or not.
I have been avoiding writing my review and usually i run, and do not walk, to the keyboard after I finish a book. I had NO IDEA how to review this book.
In reading the "Classics" and being a well-read and educated person, I can see the benefit in reading the Pulitzer Prize winners. It will only enhance your ability to engage in better conversations and add to the diversity of your mind. I am a better person for having read it. But, I'm still scratching my head. The good news is... I'm in a book club now. This is our read and we get to chat about it in just over a week. I have a feeling that I may learn a lot from these ladies. Maybe my perspective will be enhanced.
ON SHER'S "OUT OF TEN SCALE:"
Writing this review is comparable to visiting the dentist.... I'm just glad that it's done. For the genre... Fiction-Drama I give this book an 8 out of 10. I can't tell you how conflicted I am about that rating. I feel as though it deserves better from me. I reserve the right to increase the rating after my book club meeting! This book would make a good movie, if set in a linear fashion. If you are one who is offended by foul language or crude sexual descriptions, you will definitely not want to read this book... it's loaded with it. I was, however, not bothered by the majority of it.
A New Voice June 23, 2009
A. Wong (Laurel, MD United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Junot Diaz's Oscar Wao is a wondrous Post-Modern masterpiece. I hardly recall reading a book with such rapid pace and enthusiasm. Every page was quite mesmerizing with the use of language, tone, style, references (at times amusing and others oblique sci-fi), historical and cultural footnotes, and the brutal tenderness of the family relationships. The book truly took me on a journey to New Jersey and the Dominican Republic, through different space and eras. It was truly ingenious of Diaz to marry-in history and superstition as part of the character's realm of reality and psyche. Despite the specificity of the relationships between characters and their circumstances, a universal quality rings throughout each page. The most captivating chapter was the second describing the relationship between the Dominican American daughter (Lola) and her mother (Belicia), capturing the frozen angst of a love-hate mother-daughter relationship. I thoroughly enjoyed the use of Dominican Spanish throughout and even if you are not fluent in the language, you may get the gist of things, however, with the lack of "sazon" (seasoning) that the colorful Spanish provides. But ultimately, the anti-heroe is Oscar, a young Dominican American who tries to find his true identity and place in the universe. Tragic yet quite liberating.
anamorphosis at its best June 21, 2009
Christopher Kingman (Seattle, WA USA)
This novel is really quite excellent, and far more ambitious than might appear at first glance. In approaching any artistic creation, the question to be asked is always, "What of Truth becomes visible here?" In the case of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the answer is twofold. At first glance, this is the story of the title character, Oscar, who presents a subjective figure of utmost fidelity to the loving encounter--although in Oscar's case these encounters always unfold in an unrequited mode. Nonetheless, Oscar persists in his faithfulness to his love even when such persistence becomes self-destructive. In this Oscar is a truly ethical subject, and the author deftly catalogs the spectrum of heartbreak and despair that remain the destiny of nerdboys everywhere (this being the point at which I myself am most able to find a point of identification in this novel). However, Oscar Wao remains an anamorphotic tale: what appears at first to be its central motif is not the whole story. When the work is looked at askance, from another vantage point, Oscar himself blurs into an indistinct stain and an entirely different story comes into view. This is the story of the Dominican Republic through the twentieth century, and especially the years of Trujillo's dictatorship. What comes into focus are all the background details, the evocations of scenery, the setting of a particular time and place; the lives of the main characters (the Cabral/de Leon clan) become a mere excuse to stage this scene and explain this time and place. It is this dimension that constitutes this novel's eternal gift to the world, in the light it sheds on an underappreciated and all too often trivialized bit of world history. That Junot Diaz succeeds so admirably in deftly handling these disparate strands--that he manages to tell this story in just over 300 engaging and readable pages--makes this novel a truly first rate work of fiction.
Junot is dope June 17, 2009
E. Berg
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is way more than a story about a fat nerd from Jersey. It's a epic multi-generational saga of an immigrant family. Yeah, yeah, I know that's played out, but hang on. The novel is unapologetically written in Spanglish, and sports big fat footnotes that go on about Dominican history and folklore, including about the history and hearsay of the fuku (the curse on Oscar's family, and purportedly on Caribbean people in general).
This is one of those books that put a feeling in your heart and stomach that few stories can, unless they're happening to you or someone real who you care about. For me, this is very rare. Junot Diaz does it though. And rarely can I stand to read two books by one author consecutively, but I read Drown right after I finished Oscar, and was still thirsty for more.
The only downside is homeboy only writes a book like twice a century.
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