The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

This is not a good book. I really wanted it to be. I have faith in the American reading public, or at least I want to. But this is poorly written to say the least.
There is no constant narrator through much of the book. But when you get about three quarters of the way through, the author pretends that there is.
The author says the "n" word about four hundred times in the first three pages. I'm all for shock value, but it's a little much. Cussing does not a work of art make.
There are a lot of little footnotes about the Trujillo reign of terror in the DR. It is good to know history, but this particular history has nothing to do with the FICTIONAL story taking place.
Most importantly, the book forgot to be about anything. There are frightening stories and touching moments, but there's no point to it. It is obvious the author writes short stories because that is how this book reads. Like a bunch of short stories with some history and profanity slopped in. Then he realized he needed an ending and tried hard to make it deep. It was not deep.
Reading this book was like wading through mud. I cannot believe it won a Pulitzer.

We read this book for our book club. Although it was a bit confusing who the narrator was,the book was engaging and an interesting look at some aspects of the culture of the Dominican Republic.

I didn't enjoy reading the book very much, but the supplier delivered a very nice, well-packed copy of it and I was very satisfied with the transaction from that point of view.

Diaz has produced a book that is original and important in that it is a new genre, an American-Dominican American novel. The text is so full of sci-fi references I, a female reader who avoids fantasy, was lost. I respected the book, but found it unsatisfying.

A good read but I kept thinking I was missing quite a bit due to the fact that there is a lot of Spanish, DR phrases and slang that I couldn't understand. In parts, it is very heavy on footnotes that are interesting on their own but were distracting. It is also very funny and at the same time tragic.