The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Written by Junot Diaz

Narrated by Karen Olivo, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Multiple Narrators

Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J R R Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted his family for generations. With dazzling energy and insight Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous lives of Oscar; his runaway sister Lola; their beautiful mother Belicia; and in the family's uproarious journey from the Dominican Republic to the US and back. Rendered with uncommon warmth and humour, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a literary triumph that confirms Junot Diaz as one of the most exciting writers of our time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Mar 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781407433417

Reviews for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

[Alison Deckard Ramos · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful tragic and beautiful! This book is a masterpiece. Take the opportunity to listen to it.

[writergal85 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

gritty, vivid. I got really into it for the first 3/4 and did not want to put it down. I feel that things got predictable at the end. Also, I began to ask, What is so wondrous about Oscar's life? Not much. But Diaz captures the working-class and the Dominican Republic quite well (at least for someone like me who has never been there nor ever intends to travel there). The only drawback: too many footnotes on dictator Trujillo, tons of Spanish slang, and geeky cultural references. A few pop references are cool but five or six in a row is overkill.

[mdshrk1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While this is a good story, the lack of translation for some of the Spanish detracts from the story. I understand that translation only does so much, but it would have helped the story line.

[dudara_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with his first novel, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. The tale centres around a Dominican family who live in New York, but a fair portion of the book is devoted to the family history and the obsession of Dominican people with fuk? (curses or bad luck).Oscar is the fat, intense, science-fiction and gaming geek of the family. (In fact the book is peppered with fantasy and sci-fi references.) Given this combination of characteristics, it is no surprise that he is a virgin and easily falls for women. Oscar is doomed to tragedy, just as previous generations of his family were the victims of bad luck and illwill (Hence the continuing thread of fuk? in the novel). Diaz does such a wonderful job of presenting the lives of Oscar's family, that Oscar's ultimate end seems somehow fitting to the circumstances of his mother and grandparents.A lot of the book takes place during the era of the Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Footnotes throughout the text provide context and background to this era. The tone and cyncial humour in which these footnotes are presented is just brilliant. In fact, Diaz's prose throughout the novel is energetic and vitalising. It's been a while since I read a novel written in such a vibrant and snappy manner. It is a fairly unique piece of work.

[tjwilson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Trujillo. Wow. Quite the domineering bastard.

I love the chances that Diaz takes in this novel. Some of it is so very chancy that I'm not sure if I like it yet.

This is one of those novels that I second guessed when I was reading the very last pages of the book (probably because I was waiting for the Umph that Nobel Prize Literature is supposed to give me...if that Umph exists at all).

Diaz spends a lot of time building up his characters and the history that has mired their lives, so you must be patient with this book. As soon as you start trusting the narrator's keen insight and wonderfully street-erudite and emphatic prose, you're in until the end.

The historical aspect of the novel sent me on a long Googling session. I love it when books send me on researching missions.

Who knows? I might end up giving this book five stars or three stars in the next coming weeks.

[amelish · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So energetic, Yunior dropping sci-fi like he?s dropping knowledge/science and knowingly, familiarly, invitingly blasting off on flights of fancy and pure terror. Such a tender book, bravura writing/talking like skin grown shiny over deep wounds, tender in the painful and the gentle, compassionate senses alike.

[hennis_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good book. Written in a fast, talkative language, filled with lots of historical stories, love depression, fun stuff, sex. Uses a lot of Spanish, making it authentic and original.

[theanalogdivide · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Holy crow, y'all. Junot Diaz is the real deal.

[akmargie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Got through this tome on audio which was very well done. The story was excellent too with the interwoven stories and interesting characters.

[neverlistless · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novel, the winner of the 2008 Pulitzer, won me over in the end. I didn't really enjoy the first half, but really got into it as the story went on. The story is, as told by a family friend, about the de Leon family. They are from the Dominican Republic and are living in New Jersey, and are tragically complex. Some believe there is a curse on the family that followed them from the DR, which may not be too far fetched.The family's story centers around Oscar, an overweight young man who is very much into sci-fi/fantasy, comic books, role playing games and anime, and who is constantly falling in love with random women. He is endlessly teased at school and as an adult and has zero luck with the opposite sex. As an adult, he becomes depressed and even attempts suicide.What I liked about this book was that it showed how deeply others touch us - even those that are very different from ourselves and we wouldn't normally be friends with. It's a tragic story that at times feels too ridiculous to be true, but at other times really hit close to home for me.

[fuzzy_pickle · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the history lessons from the footnotes, but didn't enjoy the story very much -- despite the fact that I understood many of the fantasy references and many of the Spanish words. The ending was tragic and without any redemptive features, maybe that's just be a personal preference...

[mmread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the highlight of my reading for 2008. The spanish is very idiosyncratic but speaking the lingo definitely helps. The footnotes were a bit of a distraction but nonetheless very informative. I didn't know much about the DR at all exept what we talked about in Spanish classes at college. I traveled in the Americas and Caribean in the eighties, so for me it personalised the little that i had learnt. I also enjoyed the analagies of DR politics withscenes and characters from SciFi/Fantasy novels. I'm not a geek but i guess it gave depth to a world out there that i knew existed but hadn't been at all tempted to take an interest. Thank you Junot for everything!

[ficusfan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is about a family of Americans whose roots and family are in the Dominican Republic. It shows them struggling through life in the US, and in the DR. It had some funny moments, but mostly its something I feel the need to scrape off my shoe. It is written in what could kindly be called dialect, but is really part of the 'ignorance is cool oeuvre'. The narrator calls everyone the N-word, and often doesn't speak in complete sentences, though he is a college graduate. It is full of Spanish, Spanglish, and cool slang, The main subject of the book seems to be the use and abuse of women as the definition of normal. Scoring is the only way to win in the game of life. Throughout it all Oscar, the nerd, the reader, the writer, the speaker in proper sentences with a decent vocabulary, the good hearted, and the respectful, is denigrated, portrayed as a wacko, his masculinity erased, and his Dominican-ness denied. Finally he is killed because he is unable to change. Can we say anti-intellectual ? Of course it won the Pulitzer.Perhaps there are those who will claim the author is not promoting these ideas, but is being ironic. The whole tone is just too snide for me to swallow that.The book moves along quickly, but has to make fun of everyone and everything: history, the murdered. the dictatorship, the two other books about the subject [In the Time of the Butterflies] and [The Feast of the Goat].The story is chopped up and told from various viewpoints. It jumps around and doesn't seem to have a point, other than to be cool.

[klburnside · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For the most part I liked this book. It is told by multiple narrarators and I liked some of the the sections better than others. I think I would have appreciated the book more if I knew more about Domincian culture and more Spanish.

[joyhclark · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Diaz's prose makes the book.

[fledgist · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing novel that manages to tell the story of Dominican migrants in the New York metropolitan area, a history of the DR under Trujillo ("the dictatingest dictator who ever dictated"), involve geekiness, sf/f fandom, growing up, sexuality, humour, the distinctively Caribbean/Latino, and keep one tied to the page. This is a wonderful book.

[wubsy_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this increasingly entertaining as I read through it. The historical sections remembering Oscar's mother and grandfather were hauntingly violent, and exposed me to a culture and country that I knew nothing about (much to my shame). I felt that Oscar himself lacked the complexity of Lola, La Inca and the others which I thought was a shame. The coalescing of Spanish and English was very affective, and something I hadn't experienced before. The allusions to Middle Earth were simultaneously hilarious and disturbing, and added another dimension to the book. I thought that the use of explanatory footnotes was a careful touch, instructing the reader when he could quite easily have left them out. All in all a very enjoyable book that was a both informative and exciting.

[sharkrodeo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After all the hubbabaloo I decided to check this book out. Three word review: I wasn't impressed. The characters were frankly more stereotype than character, with very little giving them a third dimension. The nagging judgmental mother, the prideful Latina beauty, the Dictator, the fat dork, the underworld gangster, the doting religious grandmother. That is effectively all there is to each of these characters. The titular character is effectively a stereotype from his early teens until the conclusion of the book, with no unique characteristics whatsoever. To call his life wondrous is a stretch. Ybon is the epitome of untapped character development potential.The story is interesting for those interested but not familiar with the Dominican Republic (which apparently is a broader audience than I would suspect). The writing is peppered with pop-culture references, fan service for dorks, and Spanish phrases. This is the strongest point of the work. The writing is sometimes lively though the characters are flat. The narrative voice was third person, knowing things that "she never told anyone about" and yet lacking information at crucial points. I found this to be a bit of a cop-out. It's not that it's a bad book, I just don't understand the critical praise.

[kscar70 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I barely enjoyed reading this book. The plot was so-so. Not much meaning or depth in the story line or the lives of the characters. Perhaps there is an entire audience out there that can identify with these characters and therefore would be more drawn to the story line. I do not, of course, need to identify with the characters each book I read, however these characters were not appealing in anyway to me. When I finished it I wasn't sure what the point of it was. There was so much swearing in the book that is was uncomfortable for me.

[heycaye · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

People will either find this book awesome, or awful.

Me? I loved it.

I love Junot Diaz's narrative. I think our senses of humor lie on the same page, except his are darker and ten times funnier. But I get him. I've never read an author who narrates half as amusing as he does.

The story was well-crafted. Come on, it spanned a few decades. It even featured a historical era (now this part, I don't know if it's nonfictional. I'll look it up some time) starring the dictator Trujillo. (Side note: this era reminds me of the Philippines' Spanish colonial period, and Marcos' twenty-year reign, so I can understand and really relate well)

But what never changed through each generation of Cabrals is how the characters loved. Which is beyond foolishness, since it got them screwed by the fuku, aka the Dark Curse or the Doom-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

The story is intricate, yes, but the consequence is I kept looking for more Oscar Wao. I don't think this should be entitled The Brief Life of Oscar Wao, rather How the Fuku Screwed Three Generations of Cabrals. Not that I didn't like Beli's, or Lola's stories, don't get me wrong. They were all rebellious and adventurous and I like that. But I was misled.

I like Oscar. And he made me realize that if nerdery was an ocean, then he was scuba-diving in it while I, I've barely touched the surface. Damn. And here I thought I was a nerd?I don't deserve the title after all.

Another thing with this book is I never know who is narrating. I guess that's part of the charm, too. I only realized who was narrating the most part when I got to the very end. And I was like "Whoaaaaa, okay." It was one of those Eureka moments.

Of course you know what happens in the end. The title hints it. Don't worry, it's not a depressing ending. I was actually happy at the very end? ah, just READ IT. :)

P.S. Keep a Spanish-English dictionary (if you're old-fashioned) or Google Translate near you. There are a lot of Spanish thrown in there. I didn't follow this, personally, so I had to depend on what little Spanish I know. (And this is the only time I'm to credit the 333-year Spanish reign in the Philippines? I at least understood 20% of what they're saying mostly because some Spanish are incorporated in our own language)

[maddykitty · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book has wayyyy too much footnotes. In the end they became a huge distraction and I really couldn't enjoy it.

[dmcolon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" won the Pulitzer Prize. As such, I think I had some pretty high expectations for the book. As usual, my expectations did not quite match the reality of the book, but once I got past my preconceived notions, the book has a nice flow of its own. It's ostensibly the story of Oscar Wao, an overweight, Dominican nerd who lives in New Jersey. Wao's story is in reality, though, only a part of the overall narrative, that flits back and forth between Wao's friends and family. Diaz switches between several times and locations, between Rutgers to the Dominican Republic, from the 1940s and 1950s to the present all without too much temporal disruption (to be geeky about it). Diaz chronicles the fuku (family curse) on the protagonists' family and outlines their political struggles, their consummated and frustrated sexuality, and their struggles that often blur the lines between life and death. The most effective parts of the book for me centered around the Trujillo-era DR. The portrayal of the dictatorship felt like I was actually talking to Dominicans who'd lived through that time. Diaz was at his best for me when he was talking about the Dominican Republic; he just had that voice down. I found the Oscar Wao bits, though, a bit harder to get through. I know he sprinkled the narrative with lots of the cross-cultural references to sci-fi, fantasy, and Spanglish and that sort of intrigued me, but he made Oscar so repulsive, so completely stereotypically nerd, that Oscar lacked the depth that some of the other characters in this novel had. Diaz is trying to get at the issue of cultural interactions between the U.S. and the D.R. and that is certainly a fruitful area worthy of exploration. But "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" just doesn't ring true for me. The complexities of multiracial nerdiness don't work. To end this review by revealing my own nerd bona fides, I'd liken it to "Return of the Jedi", where George Lucas (for me, at least) does a better job portraying the Empire than, for instance, the Ewoks, who are sickeningly cute. It's only when we see people like Han Solo or Anakin that it gets interesting. Maybe I'm just too manichean in all of this, but it's the interaction between two extremes and looking at their intersecting points, that makes things interesting. Again, the D.R. itself has that appeal in the book -- it is seductive and menacing at once. But Oscar is too much of an Ewok to me. The problem here is that the Ewok is supposedly the main character.

[midwestms · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. I gulped this novel down. Vibrant view into New Jersey immigrant's experience as a comic-loving nerd descended from a Dominican parent. Insight into the horrors of the country's history.

[kmaziarz_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oscar, nicknamed Oscar Wao as a play on Oscar Wilde, is an overweight, sci-fi and fantasy obsessed, virginal, Dominican nerd. Coming from mixed-race roots and being a first-generation American on top of his nerdiness, poor Oscar is an outcast and loner in every group to which he could lay some claim. He comes of age awkwardly, falling in love deeply, desperately, repeatedly, and fruitlessly, his loyalties torn between his strong-willed sister and his fire-breathing mother. With chapters devoted to the life of his loving grandmother, the traumas and triumphs of his mother?s childhood in the Dominican Republic, and his sister?s adolescence under the thumb of their horrifically overbearing mother, this is more than just the story of one awkward boy growing into an awkward young man. It is, instead, a multigenerational tale demonstrating with clever, often acidly biting, humor and wisdom how the entire history of a people or a family influences the identity of each individual within it.

[jenngv · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hope you know some Espanol!!! Ok, maybe I wasn't in the mood for this book, but I skimmed the last 30 pages. It was depressing. His writing is witty and his cadence is good, but I just didn't feel for the character as much as I should have, I guess. I think I will be happy another time that I read it, I'm sure I took something from the book, but not today.

[nosajeel · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I don't have much to add to the general praise this book has gotten. The writing was sparkling from beginning to end, notwithstanding the fact that I didn't understand every tenth word. The first third or so seemed to meander but then it took off and all came together in the end. The book was as much about the horrors of Trujillo as it was about outsiders in America, of which being an immigrant was only part, together with other ingredients from Tolkien, role playing games, obesity, and an unrequited romantic. Ultimately, the novel lived up to its grandiose billing.

[konrad.katie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Weird, crazy, hilarious, heart wrenching. Really a good read. Only comment is in regard to whose point of view the story is written? I didn't figure this out until till quite near the end. Dergh.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

?They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fuk? americanus, or more colloquially, fuk??generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World. Also called the fuk? of the Admiral because the Admiral was both its midwife and one of its great European victims; despite ?discovering? the New World the Admiral died miserable and syphilitic, hearing (dique) divine voices. In Santo Domingo, the Land He Loved Best (what Oscar, at the end, would call the Ground Zero of the New World), the Admiral?s very name has become synonymous with both kinds of fuk?, little and large; to say his name aloud or even to hear it is to invite calamity on the heads of you and yours.?Thus begins Oscar Wao, a book that is not easy to read. The narrative voice ? an observer of the novel?s events named Yunior ? is often difficult to follow. A lot of Spanish is mixed in with the text, and since I don?t speak Spanish, it was sometimes frustrating trying to figure out what was being said (although I did pick up some choice Spanish insults by context). There are also numerous references to fantasy and science fiction, comics and role-playing games ? Yunior is a closet geek ? so numerous that they could get tiresome, and many are not immediately understandable to a reader who isn?t also a total nerd. (I am only 50% nerd, comparatively; I got the Lord of the Rings references and sci-fi shout-outs, but not the numerous comic book allusions.) And then there is a total lack of quotation marks, which important contemporary writers have apparently declared extinct, much to my dismay.Despite all this, I grew to love the tragic story that unfolds in Oscar Wao. The plot revolves around a curse that afflicts Oscar?s family, which reflects the curse that afflicts their home country, the Dominican Republic. The family?s history and the country?s history are interwoven in a tangle of broken dreams, disasterous love affairs and brutal violence, seasoned with a bizarre mix of fatalism and unwarranted hope that there may be change, despite all evidence to the contrary. My only major criticism was the brief section where point of view shifted to Oscar?s sister, Lola, which threw off the narrative rhythms, in my opinion. But following that section, when Yunior enters the story as an actual character, the book takes on life and took hold of me.This book surprised me, too, by teaching me quite a lot about the bloody history of the Dominican Republic, particularly its capricious, long-standing dictator Trujillo, which I knew next to nothing about. The historical details are mainly relayed in footnotes, which aren?t as jarring as you might imagine, and since they are written in the same lively narrative voice, are fun to read.Oscar Wao is different, and it?s not easy. But it sucks you in, if you let it. It creates a world and shoves you right into it. As Oscar says at the end: ?Diablo! If only I?d known. The beauty! The beauty!?

[amarillo_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Initially, I didn't like this book. Diaz's narrative style annoyed me - it seemed there were multiple voices narrating simultaneously and the first few chapters felt confused and gimmicky. In the end, however, this book won me over. It stands as an intriguing view into the DR's history (and, as the two are intertwined, US history) and a vivid portrait of characters existing between physical and cultural spaces. TBWLoOW is truly an American story . It's also entertaining.

[kambrogi_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For someone over forty, this tale of Oscar Wao?s adolescent angst is like listening to the latest rap or indie music. If you have the patience and respect to listen long enough, it may begin to sound right, even good. After a slow start, I discovered a lot of things I like in the book that balance or justify those I don?t. For one thing, it?s about plenty of people besides Oscar: his sister, his mother, his grandfather, a long line of Dominican Republicans and New Jerseyites, whose quest for survival in an inhospitable world is powerful and often heartbreaking. At first the constant allusions to ?the genres? of Oscar (the typical taste of any lonely nerd-boy: sci-fi, fantasy, RPG's) seemed excessive. I was also put off by the jarring obscenities when they seemed least appropriate, the lengthy, detailed historical footnotes to the history of the Dominican Republic (delivered in academic pop-slang), and the excessive use of untranslated Spanish. However, I began to enjoy and even admire much of this for what it is: an experiment in the language of literature, where the language itself is part of the story, and the story is a quintessentially American one. I won?t say I entirely understand the book, the purpose in some of the author?s choices, or what was on the minds of the Pulitzer committee. But I have developed genuine respect for the work.