The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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...
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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 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. Listen to Junot Díaz’s interview on iTunes “Meet the Author” here. Download iTunes here.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9781594483295 (1594483299)
ASIN: 1594483299
Publish date: 2008-09-02
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Pages no: 339
Edition language: English
Rating deleted. I can't in good conscience keep ratings for books by any of the 204 writers who signed the letter protesting the award for courage PEN gave to Charlie Hebdo. Such willful obtuseness by writers, of all people, toward freedom of expression is very troubling.
Apparently I can't give 3 1/2 stars for this Pulitzer Prize winning novel so I think I'll be generous and give it a 4. Not that it didn't deserve it. I did have fun reading the book and I did smile at the ending. Yes (and I don't think this is much of a spoiler since the title says it all), the main...
A smart, original novel that deserves all of the acclaim it has received. Diaz's voice is sharp and witty, I loved the footnotes and the myriad nerd references (A Captain Trips comment about six pages in hooked me but good), and the story itself is both interesting and engaging. If the tale lags a...
Let me preface this with a personal disclaimer. This was not an easy book to navigate with an audio version, although the reader was superb, because of the many Spanish words and colloquialisms which I did not recognize. With a visual, I could have looked back, checked the spelling, looked up words...
This book accomplishes a lot. It's funny, it has a voice (and a witty one at that), it tells an important history of the Trujillo-era Dominican Republic, it's a coming of age novel and it has memorable characters. More than anything, I enjoyed the history lesson given in such colloquial delivery. It...
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