The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | 
 enlarge | Author: Junot Diaz
Publisher: Riverhead
Category: EBooks
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $8.40
You Save: $5.60 (40%)
Rating:  234 reviews
Sales Rank: 50
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B000UZJRGI
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 229 more reviews...
 "I did all I could and it still wasn't enough." September 29, 2007
Gregory Baird (Morristown, NJ)
295 out of 308 found this review helpful
"You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest."
Meet Oscar de Leon. Once upon a time, in elementary school, Oscar was a slick Dominican kid who seemed to have a typical life ahead of him. Then, around the time he hit puberty, Oscar gained a whole lot of weight, became awkward both physically and socially, and got deeply interested in things that made him an outcast among his peers (sci-fi novels, comics, Dungeons & Dragons, writing novels, etc.). A particularly unfortunate Dr. Who Halloween costume earns him the nickname Oscar Wao for the costume's resemblance to another Oscar: playwright Oscar Wilde (Wao being a Dominican spin on the surname). His few friends are embarrassed by him, girls want nothing to do with him, and everywhere he goes Oscar finds nothing but derision and hostility. And he's not the only person in his family suffering through life: his mother, a former beauty, has been ravaged by illness, bad love affairs, and worry regarding her two children; and his sister Lola, another intense beauty, has been cursed with a nomadic soul and her mother's poor taste in men.
The kicker about the de Leon family? They just may be the victims of a bona fide curse (a particularly nasty one at that, called a fuku) as a result of their history with Rafael Trujillo, a former dictator of the Dominican Republic renowned for his brutality, and whose enemies uniformly met with disastrous ends one way or another (historical details about Trujillo and the history of his reign are scattered throughout the novel, a tidbit that may turn some off of the book, but rest assured that Diaz is so utterly entertaining a writer that they are a joy to read). The de Leons are on a collision course with disaster, but can they break the curse before it's too late?
"you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in."
Embroiled in all this mess is Yunior, our primary narrator and Oscar's former college roommate (not to mention the philandering ex-boyfriend of Lola, the novel's other narrator), whose experiences with the de Leon clan will haunt him for the rest of his life. His attempts to help Oscar become more popular fail, as do his tries to escape Oscar's grasp. "These days," he remarks at one point, "I have to ask myself: What made me angrier? That Oscar, the fat loser, quit, or that Oscar, the fat loser, defied me? And I wonder: What hurt him more? That I was never really his friend, or that I pretended to be?"
Oscar is far and away the most poignant character to come along in a great long while; in my book he's every bit as memorable as Ignatius J. Reilly, Holden Caulfield, Randall Patrick McMurphy, and other literary giants. Furthermore, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" is a phenomenal novel that is hysterical, hypnotic, heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal parts (and quite often at the same time). The plot is a madcap high-wire act balanced with astonishing dexterity by Junot Diaz. If he has a misstep it is in the denouement, which is rather sudden and slightly lacking in clarity for an otherwise thorough novel. Nonetheless, I loved, loved, loved this book. And, naturally, I highly recommend it.
Grade: A
Wao as in WOW! October 17, 2007
Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA)
30 out of 32 found this review helpful
Dude can write. In fact, this book is one of the most original that I've come across in a long time.
Like the layers of an onion, Diaz peels back the layers of years to reveal the back history of Oscar and his sister Lola. And what a history it is! The Banana Curtain is unveiled and the horrors of Trujillo -- the raging narcissist and despoiler of women -- are unflinchingly revealed, creating shudders of revulsion and flashes of understanding in this reader.
Junot Diaz creates a language and a tempo unlike any I've read before, peppered with Spanish colloquialisms, street talk, and video game terminology. Somehow, though, it works -- and works beautifully -- even if you don't know an "hola" from an "adios" or have never played a video game in your life (like this reader.)
I will not soon forget Oscar Wao, the 300+ pound romantic, Lola, Yunior, or his mother and the Gangster and his ill-fated grandparents. The book is compulsively readable. For all of those who say that "the novel is dead", I say: read Junot Diaz.
The Wondrous Curse and Doom of Oscar Wao. January 5, 2008
G. Merritt (Boulder, CO)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
"It is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed the fuku on the world."
Junot Diaz is a contemporary Dominican-American writer known for his 1996 short story collection Drown and frequent contributions to The New Yorker and Paris Review. Narrated by Yunior (a character from Drown) and set in New Jersey, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is Diaz's first novel, and like his earlier work engages the duality of the Dominican-American experience in a multiperspective way. The novel tells the story of Oscar, a sympathetic, depressed, obese, first-generation Dominican-American ghetto nerd with a insatiable love for science fiction, fantasy, and girls, from his childhood to his untimely death. On one level. Yunior's narrative may be read as "the true account of the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," the story of his protagonist's cursed life involving the ceaseless struggle to make friends, lose weight, and find a woman to love him. On another level, the novel may be read as a lesson in how history shapes one's individual destiny. As if it were in his DNA, Oscar is afflicted with fuku americanus, "generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World." Diaz explains, "that's the kind of culture I belong to: people took their child's black complexion as an ill omen."
There are so many things that contribute to make this novel such a pleasure to read: the recurring theme of fuku, the rich and energetic prose, the multicultural themes and ethnic diversity, the "Negropolitan vernacular," slang, and linguistic nuances of the narrative, the footnotes, and all the humor inherent to Oscar's human experience. One of my favorite novels of 2007, and highly recommended.
G. Merritt
the funniest, sweetest book of the year September 18, 2007
Richard Cumming (blue state)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
Wow, Junot Diaz is a force! I can't remember the last time I loved a book this much. Oscar Wao is a Dominican fanboy nerd living in New Jersey. He's crazy about women but they won't give him the time of day. Even when he visits the Dominican Republic the women look the other way.
Oscar fancies himself to be a fantasy writer. He loves JRR Tolkien, comic books, etc. He's that sweet, fat, intellectual dweeb who deserves love but doesn't know how to get it.
Diaz has long, hysterical footnotes that give readers a pocket history of the infamous regime of the Dominican dictator Trujillo. Oscar's mom and sister are incredible characters.
This book will make your heart burst. It's that good.
illuminating--a must read November 5, 2007
Myfanwy Collins (New England)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Oh boy, is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao an interesting, challenging, illuminating book. At first, I wondered if I would be at a disadvantage as I do not get most of the allusions to comic books (though the Tolkien, etc, is not lost on me)--still knowing these things is not necessary to find what you need in this book. I also initially worried over the footnotes--would they be a chore? Would I end up skipping them? Nope and nope. From the beginning, I looked forward to them and what they had to teach me--about the history of the Dominican Republic, about life.
So what about the story? Well, since two of the main characters (Yunior and Oscar) are writers, I'm tempted to call it at least partly a Kuenstlerroman--but if so, who is Diaz? Perhaps they both are--different sides of him, making one whole or who he was and who he might have become? Really, it is silly to speculate this way about fiction, but when a character in a book is a writer, it's tempting. Still, this is not only a story about an awkward boy's coming of age--it is also a story of family and survival and, most importantly, love. Big love. The biggest. The love which you risk everything for--the love you are willing to die for. The love that conquers all (perhaps even fuku).
Oscar is a poignant, painful, and lovable character--I felt for his awkwardness, his desire for love, his attempts at fitting in (the scene when he attempts to start the sci fi club when he is teaching was scorchingly painful to me), and his self-awareness which is in constant battle with his delusions. Equally impressive, are the female characters--specifically Oscar's mother and sister. Their own brutal histories and sacrifices and survival are breathtaking, heartbreaking.
It's a beautiful, luminous, and often humorous book told in only the way Diaz can--straight up and with no bull. Read it and you will learn something you likely did not know before.
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