The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Part of the pain of this book is realizing that my life was so similar to Oscar's. Diaz is a brilliant writer, juggling historical nonsense, emotionally deformed characters and dense relationships. But at the same time the book has a super heavy feel. Like Oscar himself. And, like Oscar, there's a fundamental question -- sure, it's challenging to try to get at his core, but is it really worth the challenge?

Oscar is a heavyset loser who seems to be going balls out to try to be the biggest (damn pun!) loser he could possibly be. Diaz piles it on with international conspiracy, a no-luck crazy mama and on and on. The instinct is to love the underdog. But, hell, who wasn't an underdog at that age? Why can't Oscar belittle other people until he feels better about himself like I did?

Having said that, well, you know, it's good. So I gave it 4 stars.

This is a terrific book. I'm not usually so colloquial in my reviews, but "terrific" suits the complete lack of pretense in this book. Oscar Wao is a wonderful portrait of Dominican life. Junot Dias's language is filled with love for life, in all its joys, suffering, fears and passion. His language is a rich landscape for the reader to traverse. His protagonists experience the world in vivid, at times unbearable technicolor. The story itself becomes almost background music for the vibrant people who inhabit it. In short, you'll feel wonderfully surrounded by Hispanic, and particularly Dominican, life as you read this book.

I listened to Oscar Wao unabridged on audio CD, narrated by Jonathan Davis and Staci Snell. Both do a fine job portraying the emotion and sensitivity of the characters, voiced in Spanish-accented English that adds a musical lilt to the narrative.

This audio CD also included "Drown", Dias' short story collection, narrated by Jonathan Davis. The collection is another highly enjoyable immersion in Dominican story and culture, filled with a library of rich images.

This book is amazing!! It truly took my breath away, so very vivid with much accurate historical data intertwined, I cannot fully express my pleasure as I read this book. I actually wanted it to continue. I believe Mr. Junot Diaz to be a wonderfully talented author and I can't wait for his next book. I would recommend this book to one and all who truly enjoy fantastic literature.

In this novel Junot Diaz reviews the recent history of the Dominican Republic while telling the story of a luckless American whose family is from the Domincan Republic and who suffers from the fukú, a curse passed down through generations and afflicting terrible harm on its victims. The narrator, a love-crazed logophile, tries to help Oscar develop from nerd to alpha man with very little success while pursuing his own career as writer and lover and telling the brutal and desperate story of life during Trujillo's dictatorship. To the narrator's ongoing frustration, the sci-fi addicted Oscar stubbornly chooses to find his own way through life, and it is often an unhappy one, although he manages to make a living and find some happiness as a teacher and writer and sometime developer of games. When he finally falls in love, he does so fatally but heroically in the face of post-Trujillo brutality.

I really liked this book. The narrator's delight with his own story-telling abilities and his high-speed take on language and culture make the reading a pleasure even when the events described are horrifying. I learned some things about Dominican history along the way, and Oscar, a decent guy though also a loser who refuses to stop being a loser, is a sympathetic character because he also never stops being himself. It's really a book about integrity and its consequences and about writing as zafa, the antidote to the curse and the means to move beyond it.

Set in the Dominican Republic and New Jersey and spanning the last half of the 20th century this book follows the life of a family caught in the web of Dominican politics. A moving and compelling story beautifully written.