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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | 
| Author: Junot Díaz
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $6.57
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Rating:  263 reviews
Sales Rank: 42
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 1594483299
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594483295
ASIN: 1594483299
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Special Purchase Limited Time Only BRAND NEW FACTORY SEALED (WE DO NOT SHIP TO HI, AK, WA, NY, KS, KY, ND)
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2007: It's been 11 years since Junot Díaz'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
The most talked about and praised first novel of 2007, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú a curse that has haunted Oscar s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao<./I> opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere and risk it all in the name of love.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 258 more reviews...
 Wao as in WOW! October 17, 2007
Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA)
44 out of 48 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 fukú on the world."
Junot Díaz 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 fukú 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 fukú, 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
Great Story - but requires Multi-Lingual ability October 28, 2008
Lisa Shea
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
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 Künstlerroman--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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