The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Ratings170
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings170
Average rating3.8
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. From the back cover: "Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who 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 fuku - a curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, following them on their epic journey from the Dominican Republic to the United States and back again."
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Reviews with the most likes.
This book is a post-modern family epic couched in Dominican culture, history, and folklore. It follows the sad life of an overweight sic-fi nerd's struggle with cultural/stereotypical machismo expectations (being a Dominican man) and his inability to be with any women due to aforementioned weight/overt neediness, and how this somehow delegitimizes him as a human. Díaz employs a super interesting narrative style that includes footnotes explaining the Dominican dictatorship of the 20th century via footnotes, interjections sci-fi and pop culture references, and playful Spanglish.
Overall I liked it and it was like nothing I've read before, but I had a hard time getting really absorbed in it.
Really interesting, and weird in the best way. I learned so much from this book about Latin American history and the 20th-century diaspora. I found Lola more compelling than Oscar. Reading in audiobook was excellent, though I probably missed more of the Spanish this way (my fault).
Actually currently listening to it whenever I'm in the car. I really like the narrator, but being that the narrative is so disjointed, I'm not sure only listening to it sporadically is the best method. We'll see at the end.
