The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

The most important thing to know about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is that it is a MULTI language book. Large portions of it are written in Spanish. There are also numerous other phrases and situations lifted from a number of sci-fi books, anime, manga, which form a language in and of themselves. You either need to know all of these worlds thoroughly to understand the book, or you need to have a "cliff notes" guide next to you and go back and forth between the book you're reading and the explanation of what the chapter actually meant.

The book is told from a number of points of view - Oscar, his sister Lola, his mother, even his grandmother and more. Each person tells a portion of the story from their own point of view and fills in more of the storyline. Oscar is an obese man of Dominican descent who takes refuge in a world of sci-fi and fantasy. He is picked on for his size and his depression and retreat make up the majority of this story. What makes up the other part is the history of the Dominican Republic. With many books you read the story and at the end all you've learned is about those fake characters and their lives. With this book, you really learn a lot about the Dominican Republic - something that most of us probably know nothing at all about. I give the book a lot of credit for all of the research and information it presents in a fun, enjoyable way. The use of footnotes to do it is a bit stilting at time, but it still is enriching to learn the history.

I really did enjoy the book greatly - but I also took six years of Spanish. I could understand what it was saying. I think the average non-Spanish speaker who is reading along about Beli working in a restaurant and hitting the phrase, "Oye, paraguayo, y que paso con esa esposa tuya? Gordo, no me digas que tu todavia tienes hambre?" are going to be sort of lost. I could see if they tossed in one-word in context words such as "Adios, see you later my friend!" However, the book goes FAR beyond that and often you need to know what the words mean to understand what is going on. There really should have been footnotes with translations - there are certainly enough footnotes with less important things story-wise.

In the same way, you miss a lot of the storyline if you haven't read certain books. For example, Oscar often speaks in Dune-language. He says at one point his grandmother "tried to use the Voice" on him. This is a power of the Bene Gesserit in Dune, where they could subtly control someone's actions by speaking in a certain way to them. In another part he is afraid, and starts quoting "Fear is the mind killer" which is the Bene Gesserit "Litany Against Fear". The whole litany gives a mental environment for handling fear, which the reader is expected to know and understand.

More people might get the Lord of the Rings references which are scattered around quite a lot, given the recent popularity of those movies. One woman is "ageless, the family's very own Galadriel," i.e. the Elven beauty from Lothlorien. Speaking of Lothlorien, another section of the book talks about how a woman "who with the elvish ring of her will had forged within Bani her own personal Lothlorien, knew that she could not protect the girl against a direct assault from the Eye." There's a lot of Lord of the Rings mythology wrapped up in that sentence that a non-LOTR reader would miss. Even more meaningful, when Oscar first read Lord of the Rings he choked at the line "and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls" which represents an entire area of sociological discussion about how Tolkien handled dark skinned people.

This type of situation is everywhere. There are lines from Akira. Commentary from Star Wars. Lots of quick one-line references that bring with them a wealth of meaning, but if you don't have that background of literature in your history, you will miss what he's trying to say. I was lucky in that I am a huge sci-fi buff and also love anime, so I got a lot of those references, but it really makes me wonder 1) what I still might have missed and 2) how much others who have not read all these things are going to miss. Again, the book really needs a CliffNotes to go with it, so you can see what all the references meant in the chapter you just finished.

I didn't find any websites that do this type of breakdown, so maybe I should start one up! It really is needed, to get the full understanding of the plot and subtle meaning in what is being said.

Well recommended if you have that Spanish language background and sci-fi fantasy understanding. If you go into this without understanding Spanish and not having read any sci-fi, you're going to run into a lot you are confused by. You can either just accept that is going to happen or have a web browser nearby to help you translate.

Junot Diaz stretches our understanding of what it is to be an American. He helps us view our heritage through the lives of his characters and their ancestors, fully realized figures who experience the governmental and social turmoil of the Dominican Republic's past. The Revolutionary War is not the entire story of America's violent beginnings. The destructive history of the Dominican Republic born in the days when Christopher Columbus first stepped onto its shores impacts the current lives of Oscar Wao and his family.

Another major force working in this book is the quest of Oscar Wao simply to love and be loved for and as himself, intimately and completely. Why is this so hard for someone so sweet of temperament with such intelligence and depths of perception? Oscar is, after all, a gifted and talented writer. What is it to be a man, especially as defined by Hispanic culture? What does it take to get someone to overcome a lifetime of inertia and help himself to experience all that each and every human being has a basic human need, desire, and a right to enjoy?

These are just a few of the many and varied themes that Diaz explores in depth in this outstanding novel. The writing is fresh, original, and thoroughly enjoyable. Nicely paced.

This novel was a book group selection here at our local library. Some members of our group gave up reading the novel part way through mostly, I think, because of their reading experiences being limited to particular genres. After hearing the group's lively discussion, one person expressed the wish that she had seen it through.

One can be daunted by the Spanish phrases (and occasional references to literary, movie, or TV heroes) used by the characters and narrator to varying degrees throughout the text. They occur naturally and it would have been a great injustice to the work not to have employed them.

There are two easy solutions to this. One is to just go on reading and simply gain meaning through context. I found this functioned well with very little lost in overall plot and meaning.

Secondly, there are also some great online resources for the reading of this book which will conveniently translate, define, and otherwise explain references to Tolkien's works, etc. chapter by chapter. The meanings of individual sentences are thereby enhanced, but if one stops for each and every unknown Spanish term or literary reference, the enjoyment of the very act of reading and "listening" to the narrator as he shares his story becomes somewhat burdensome. For this reason, I suggest finding a middle ground between the two methods of reading. Use mostly context, and refer to a guide only when feeling really stumped.

Do not let that little caveat to reading keep you from enjoying this wonderful book.

Junot Diaz has so much to offer us In "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" that it may well change for the better the way you view your family, your neighbors, and the little daily interactions that become the sum total of our lives.

If you are looking for a formal, elegant, or pretty book, Oscar Wao is not for you. I am not saying that Junot Diaz is not a great writer, but Diaz has a way of writing this book, as one would tell someone else a story, very informally and up close and personal. He brings the lives of the characters into full view, regardless of the things they are doing. (Some things you may not want to hear about! AKA the hormonal impulses of teenagers...) Diaz has created characters that many people will not be able to relate to, but you will want to see these characters succeed, and when they do not, you will feel sorry for them. Diaz has written a gateway into a world many people have never experienced, the dark side of life full of beatings and life-threatening situations, but also a world of heavy nerd-dom with references to The Lord of the Rings, and The Fantastic Four. Many readers have labeled this book as deeply depressing, but I feel that Diaz succeeds in writing depressive situations, yet having a small ray of hope at the end. Without giving away the ending, the main character's lives are shrouded with torment yet Diaz still brings happiness and love into their lives. The foul language used and the slang terms in Spanish disgust other people. The truth is, the use of this language does not detract from the book at all, but really, it helps the readers gain insight into the story, and in turn become closer the setting and the characters through these colloquialisms. Having someone around who is fluent in Spanish is not necessary, as many words could easily be understood through the context in which they are used. Rarely does Diaz write a whole sentence in Spanish. Even then, a couple seconds on the internet could easily enlighten anyone. Foot notes can be extremely long, but they are also extremely funny and give good background information to the history of the Dominican Republic. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was a great book in my opinion, and I feel it was worthy of the Pulitzer Prize. Not only formal, elegant books who sound pretty and are devoid of all things disgusting and/or repulsive, should win the Pulitzer Prize. Diaz's book is truly a tragicomedy about the life of an uber-nerd, his family, and their unfortunate curse. This book treads where many dare not, yet Diaz's book borders real world conflicts, and left me with a feeling of amazement at the life of Oscar. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who can handle a few instances of bad language.

::Possible spoilers:: I had to let this book settle in my mind for a couple of days before I could think about reviewing it. It's that memorable, confusing, disturbing, and incomprehensible.

First the good. I liked learning about the Dominican Republic. I can honestly say that most Americans probably have no clue, and this is certainly a good way to pick up some knowledge. I also thought most of the characters' stories were well told and involving, and they felt realistic. The language really pulls you in, and you can almost hear the different characters speaking in accent.

Now, the bad. I don't speak Spanish. While I don't mind being challenged with a couple of words here and there, whole untranslated sentences really start to irritate me. I had to read this book with my cell phone browser open to a webpage with translations of all of the Spanish, Spanglish, Japanese, slang, and obscure nerd references. I also could have done with a couple fewer references to extremely large breasts and women's genitals. The women are objectified, I got it the first time.

I consider myself to be a pretty respectable nerd. I play video games, read science fiction and comic books, etc. Even I had difficulty with some of the references, which seem to span about five decades. I honestly wonder how many people would know what things like "4d10" mean without looking them up. This book desperately needs some sort of appendix with all of the translations. However, the footnotes Diaz does use to explain the reign of Trujillo are extremely long, meandering, and mostly useless.

The book is named after Oscar, but I felt he almost vanished from most of the story, and his mother took over. It really should have been titled The Brief Wonderous Life of Belicia Cabral. I didn't feel like I really knew Oscar at all or even understood his actions. I certainly didn't understand why he insisted on chasing the hottest girl he could find, only to whine about her not liking him later. I didn't really see how Lola went from practically living on the streets, then living in the DR (and going to a school she acknowledges would not be recognized in the US), to all of a sudden going to Rutgers. Last time I checked, you have to actually graduate high school (or get a GED) in order to get into college. She seemed like two different characters that I couldn't reconcile in my mind. Also, why was Belicia Cabral so incredibly cruel to her daughter? How would a jock who only concentrated on getting laid know enough about Oscar Wilde to say Oscar Cabral looked like him? And what exactly was that mongoose with the glowing golden eyes? Did I miss the symbolism? And how exactly did Oscar stop the fuku at the end? Is a death required to stop a family curse? Too many questions.

Despite all of the issues I had with the book, though, I still found myself liking it. I liked the underlying story, I just wish Diaz had been a little more gentle with his readers and given us some help with the translations.