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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

By Sophia | Posted Under Book Reviews | Comments (15)

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I had some pretty high expectations when I finally got around to reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Diaz. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the recipient of fantastic reviews from every corner, I was prepared to be wowed. And in the end, I was, although I was a bit underwhelmed for the first hundred pages or so.

Oscar is an overweight fantasy/science-fiction loving nerd, whose mother came to New Jersey from the Dominican Republic. Burdened by cultural expectations as well as his exceeding romanticism, Oscar longs for sex and love and delves into depression and despair when he can’t change his life into something else. But the book is about a lot more than just Oscar, allowing vivid glimpses into the history and culture of the Dominican Republic, the story of Oscar’s mother and grandparents, and moving relationships between friends, siblings, lovers, and family.

Now that I’m looking back on this book, I can appreciate it, but for awhile I was feeling lost and worried that this was one I was going to have to force myself through. The biggest problem, for me, is that I can be somewhat anal-retentive. The author was constantly throwing in references to science-fiction and fantasy (fortunately, I have read The Lord of the Rings, which allowed me to pick up on some of them.) as well as a lot of Spanish or Dominican slang that I could not understand. I felt like I was missing out on a lot of the book. And to make matters worse, the book kept skipping around. I couldn’t tell who the narrator was, the book jumped without warning to Oscar’s sister, Lola’s, point of view, and then jumped back in time to the Dominican Republic. It also wasn’t clear on people’s names or relationships, and I wasn’t sure whether I had somehow missed out on some of these explanations in the slang and Spanish, or if I wasn’t supposed to know.

“For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history…” Yup, that would be me. I knew so little about the Dominican Republic, that two pages into the novel I had to pause for some quick internet research in order to give me some context. I love learning and reading the history of places I know almost nothing about, but, again, I had some trouble with this in the beginning of the book because the author’s style made it hard to see what was exaggerated fiction and what might be historically accurate.

Fortunately, as the book moves along, the story comes back and answers all of my questions. I stopped feeling lost and jerked around and got more involved in the characters and the plot. The novel is actually much richer for first seeing Oscar’s mom through Oscar’s and Lola’s eyes before hearing her full story. After whiling away the days, trying to read the first half of this book, I couldn’t put it down for the second half. It was intense, honest, and moving, and I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize.

This review is part of the Cannonball Read series, which Sophia has already completed. But she keeps bringing the reviews, god bless her. For more of Sophia’s reviews, check out her blog, My Life As Seen Through Books.







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Comments

It sounds like the first half, at least, was just badly written.

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at October 2, 2009 8:28 AM

Not at all, Tracer, the entire book is very well-written. Diaz does have a very culturally-specific style, however, and for those of us that don't have a history in the Spanish language, Dominican history, and the sci-fi/fantasy canon, it can be a little tough to get into. The changing point of views can be a bit confusing, but in the end add up to a very thorough picture of Oscar's personal and family history. I flew through this one and gave it to a bunch of friends, it is a great read. Just be prepared for a few reference that you may have to do a little digging on.

Posted by: Jarsh at October 2, 2009 8:47 AM

Thanks for the review Sophia, I was looking for a good book to start and this might be it. As for the style the first 1/2 of the book, well, it sounds very Dominican, like you are in the house or on the corner and everyone is talking all at once. And yes, everything exaggerated and accelerated.

Posted by: mamitabrujita at October 2, 2009 8:48 AM

Good review, Sophia, and a very good book. Diaz uses a unique voice to narrate this story mixing in pop-culture references, slang, profanity, and bits of colloquial Spanish along with historical trivia and even the dreaded footnotes. There are lots of asides to the reader and many observations that start with the word "dude". The result is challenging yet readable, very entertaining, and also very informative for those of us that only had two seconds of Dominican history in school.

Junot Diaz is actually going to be doing a reading at the University in my town this week. I'm really interested in going if work and life permit. I would love to hear this read by the author because I'm sure this white boy butchered some names and places when left on my own.

bonus link for new readers:
The link below may be helpful to people trying to read (or re-read) this book. Someone has taken the time to annotate this novel online. It's pretty thorough, touching on the sci-fi references, the historical references, and the untranslated Spanish phrases. Also, it's chock full of wikipedia links for further education. (sadly I only discovered this after I read the book).

Annotated Oscar Wao

Posted by: Yossarian at October 2, 2009 9:44 AM

I think of myself as fairly anal retentive, too, but I had no problems with this book. If you let the language and the allusions wash over you, you get the meaning behind them, even if you don't get the specific context. In fact, I think if you tried to read it the first time using the annotations above, you'd miss out on the spirit of the novel. It's dense, for sure, like T.S. Eliot, but the narrative pulls you along. I would agree with Sofia, though, that the second half is more compelling than the first.

Posted by: marya at October 2, 2009 10:10 AM

I had a tough time getting into it myself, but once I relaxed into it and just kind of let it happen, it really worked for me. I love the way Junot Diaz writes. His voice just crackles and sparkles. And I just loved every character in the book.

Posted by: megbon at October 2, 2009 10:12 AM

I loved this book. Nice review!

Posted by: Julie at October 2, 2009 10:13 AM

I really enjoyed this book. I will admit, all the sci-fi/fantasy references were the hook for me. I understood most of them and really enjoyed being able to relate to them. The Dominican slang and most of the history went right over my head (though I did do some googling on the latter).

The first 100 pages or so were probably some of my favorite stuff. I think I read them all in one sitting. Again, this probably had to do with all the sci-fi/fantasy references packed in there.

While I loved the book, I was sort of surprised at how it ended. It most certainly worked thematically it was just not quite what I was expecting.

Posted by: Forbiddendonut at October 2, 2009 10:21 AM

Diaz just came to a local university in my town, and the reading was awesome! He is definitely a character.

The questions focused a lot on narrative voice and structure. He said something that I think speaks to this review. Someone asked him who he thought his audience for this book was and he replied that only a handful of people were going to get everything, and that it was his intention for some of the readers to be on the outside looking in. He's basically writing about an experience that closely mirrors his own (Dominican nerd), that so few can completely relate to, and yet everyone can relate to at least some facet of the story. He's simultaneously excluding and welcoming his readers.

Posted by: Saia at October 2, 2009 3:59 PM

I read this book a while back and found a podcast online of a reading/Q&A Diaz did - though I've lost the link I transcribed part of it for my book club, because the "I don't understand all this Spanish" issue came up, and the answer Diaz gave to a question on that exact subject was wholly satisfying. Here's part of it (transcribed as best I could, all errors my own):

"...Especially if you're an immigrant, one of the things you discover when you learn English later in life, is you discover that unintelligibility... is a normal part of communications. There's always part of every message that gets lost or is misinterpreted or is never heard. There's a dream of perfect communication, and it's a wonderful dream, but it doesn't exist. Unintelligibility is not a misfire of language, it's a very vital and important component of it. .... I just think that the experience of unintelligibility is a normal one linguistically, it's a normal one for life, and I thought that Spanish wasn't the really big problem in this book. I think people read it and encounter the different Spanishes and if you don't know it, you feel left out, but word for word there's actually more nerd, fanboy, science fiction, fantasy, comic book, and apocalyptic movie references, jokes than there is Spanish, but because these jokes are made in English, people just skip over them. People are like, Okay, I really don't know who the fuck E.E. Doc Smith is, or why this has any relevance to your book, but since it's an English word I'll just skip over it. And I think that depending on who the person is, different areas of the book create different of the language strands create tensions for that person. My Dominican friends have no problem with the Spanish. They get really mad at me for all my intellectual and grad school language. They're like, Yo, nobody really fucking talks like that. My friends who were fanboys who love the references to the lensmen, who want to talk about Orion and the new gods and Jack Kirby, they're like, Aw this shit is amazing! My female readers from my friends don't give a shit about comic books - they're like, Cut all that crap out. I feel like linguistically there's always as much intolerance as there is tolerance, and again I think if a book doesn't attempt to rub you the wrong way, at least in parts, then it's attempting to be your friend, and a piece of art that's attempting to be your friend isn't a piece of art."

Posted by: junot diaz fan at October 2, 2009 4:16 PM

One of our clients is in the process of adapting this. Sounds like an interesting read.

Posted by: DarthCorleone at October 2, 2009 7:47 PM

I adore this book and particularly adore the footnotes. Diaz is essentially saying that he's not going to make the book some romantic, easy-to-read immigrant narrative. Dominicans don't have the luxury of shorthand cultural references as a marginalized people, so the reader has to do the work of understanding the larger historical context to truly appreciate the book. This is absolutely a book one has to read carefully.

Posted by: samantha t at October 5, 2009 10:43 AM

I went to a general store. They wouldn't let me buy anything specifically.

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