The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by eusebiusandflorestan
After getting home for the holidays, I ran across The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz in my local library. Since it won the Pulitzer Prize (a fairly big deal in the States) I figured I’d read the first couple of chapters and see if I liked it. I would say the book is very good, though not without flaws.
In brief, the book centers around the life of the titular Oscar Wao, an obese, nerdy kid from a hardscrabble Dominican family. Oscar fails to fit well into society, and as the book progresses, the narrative reveals that Oscar’s family has a long history of being ‘cursed.’ Essentially, his forbears used to be quite wealthy and upstanding citizens before running afoul of the Trujillo dictatorship and being disowned. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how it manages to weave a good deal of 20th century Dominican history into the narrative of Oscar’s family. This grounds the book’s themes in a particularly strong sense of place, Díaz is quite accomplished at scene setting in both New Jersey, where Oscar is born and lives, and the family background scenes set in the Dominican. Some of the material is quite stomach churning, as Oscar’s grandfather and mother suffer graphic depredations at the hands of the Dominican authorities.
To my mind the strongest part of the book is the character of Oscar. His hopeless nerdyness and inability to make human connections and resulting loneliness is deeply sympathetic and quite moving. The gradual historical reveal of his background is well handled, it was particularly fun to see the proto-nerdyness of his prosperous doctor grandfather reflected in Oscar’s personality. The book’s prose is quite striking, heavily spiced with Dominican Spanish, it generally proves quite readable. I also found the conclusion, where Oscar is killed while trying to prosecute a doomed romance with a ‘claimed’ Dominican woman quite moving.
As for faults, the book’s chronology is quite hard to follow. The author chooses to break Oscar’s story up with several asides into his family’s history, while these prove invaluable for understanding Oscar’s destiny, they also tend to interrupt the flow of the narrative and sometimes seem more like interruptions than organic developments. As well, the author’s decision to have the book narrated or authored by Oscar’s best (and really only friend) Yunior, a roommate, is an odd choice. Yunior comes to know Oscar in college while trying to seduce his very attractive older sister, and eventually becomes somewhat obsessed by Oscar’s various peculiarities. Yunoir tends to spike his narrative with a number of nerdy references, perhaps by way of suggesting how much Oscar had influenced him. However, the casual reader who does not have a good knowledge of Watchmen, Dune, or the Lord of the Rings trilogy might find these features hard to comprehend.
In general, the book is an effective and readable narrative that I would easily recommend to others.
Merry Christmas!
Eusebius
eusebiusandflorestan 
Nice review! Maybe I should read it, too. Unfortunately, I have to sign up for being “the casual reader who does not have a good knowledge of Watchmen, Dune, or the Lord of the Rings trilogy” as you are well aware of, Eusebius 🙂 The Dominican perspective sounds interesting. I like the way you criticised the chronology, I have had the same experience you describe with other books, it can indeed be quite disruptive.
Feel free to ask me to explain any nerd references! If I can’t I have my brother, who is even more of an uber-nerd than I am 🙂 I often have the same problem with chronology and perspective as well, authors like to try and be clever but it needs to be done with care. The problem with this book is that some of the transitions were so abrupt that it took me a bit to figure out what was going on and why it was relevant.