The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Although this book focuses on the plucky and unlucky life of a Dominican male growing up in New Jersey, any nerdy, book-loving, unlucky-in-love schlub out there can relate to his efforts to find love and stay true to himself. I felt his pain and kept rooting for him throughout, even after disaster after disaster strikes him and his family. Not only does Oscar have to contend with his own demons, he has to deal with the crush of history that still infiltrates Dominican life on the island and in the diaspora. The aftermath of the dicator's Trujillo's pathological reign leaves no one safe from a "fuku" or curse. The book provides footnotes on Dominican history for those of us "who have forgotten the ten seconds of Dominican history we learned in school." A little knowledge of Dominican slang would also help you get through the book, though I must say I am happy to add a few choice phrases to my expanding Spanish vocabulary. If you are interested in learning more about Trujillo and how he "fuku-ed" the Dominican people, I suggest reading Mario Vargas Llosa's book The Feast of the Goat

The writer does it all at once. he knows to talk street and write a classic family tragedy and inform the ignorant public about the fuku. the novel blends litary genres effortlessly. i lived and died the history of the Dominican Republic. i forgot that i can't speak spanish. this book was an enthralling yet utterly devasting journey.

This book is funny, sad, historical, and poetic. Truly one of the best reads of all time. It moves you to experience conflicting emotions simultaneously which is rare and genious.

I had been hearing about Junot Díaz's debut novel for some time before I actually read it, mainly because of its satellite connections to J.R.R. Tolkien and other fantasy and science-fiction writers. I finally read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao earlier this month (right after my wife). We both loved it. It's a funny, colloquial, strange and sad story that spans three generations of a Dominican and Dominican-American family. Unsettling parallels emerge between the generations, strange hints of a curse, several appearances (or not?) of a supernatural spirit animal, violence in remote sugar cane fields, and of course, the daily trials and tribulations of a nerdy kid who really wears his heart on his sleeve -- all set against the backdrop of the bloody tyrrany of the Trujillo years in the Dominican Republic.

I would like to spotlight two things I especially liked about the book. The First is actually a cluster of related elements: the style, the colloquialism, the voice(s) through which the story is related -- all are fresh and smart, and so different from the so-called "literary novels" (without naming names).

Second, I really enjoyed the way Díaz salted so many untranslated Spanish (and specifically Dominican) phrases throughout the book. I live in Texas, and I can manage fairly well with Latin American Spanish. I understood the bulk of it, but certainly not all of it, and I found it enjoyable to try to determine the meaning of the Dominican slang through context. My wife agreed, and she knows almost no Spanish at all. In a way, this technique reminded me of Tolkien, who employed passages of untranslated Elvish in his own fiction. It helps to create a mood, a feeling of verisimilitude (overused as that word is), a depth. It really invites you into the inner lives of this Dominican family.

I can't recommend the book highly enough!

Man, this is an amazing piece of work! I'm stoked every time I think of Diaz's display of verbal pyrotechnics, the easy and fluidity of language, his artful command of both English and Spanish jargon, jive, coolness, and all that. I'm also stoked by the creation of these memorable characters. Where does he find them? How does he do it? The book literally breathes life. And that's a gift, the power of all great fiction.

-Tom Maremaa, Author of the Forthcoming novel "Metal Heads" from Kunati Books in Spring 2009