The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

My new school, Mount Holyoke College, has this thing called Common Reading. There is a book selected and the entire student body reads it and participates in discussions. This book is the choice for this school year and the author will be speaking on campus.

The only thing that kept be from giving this book 5 stars is the one draw back I found and while it fits with the tone and feel of the book it was something that felt like enough of a downside to make it a 4.5 star rather than 5. There is some Spanish and since I don't speak it I had to use a translation page if I wanted to know what I was reading. For the most part in the context of the English around the words and phrases I was able to get the gist of it but I mostly wanted to know exactly what was being said. I didn't always do it but when I was reading at home I did. 

The story itself I really, really liked. Oscar is such a sad, sweet, nerd and a bit of a loser. His mother has a tortured past and her sins and burdens very much color the way she mothers her children. His sister fares much better than he does but she doesn't have an easy go of it by any stretch of the imagination. The story of Oscar and his family is weaved in with a lesson on the history of the Dominican Republic, both politically and culturally. It was really very interesting. The tragic history of the family, the cultural belief of curses and the time in history important to the story weave together using flashbacks, footnotes, a narrator in the present helping to tell the story years after the big event of the tale and is very effective making Oscar feel real and jump off the page. There are a lot of nerdy references to things like Watchman, Lord of The Rings and D&D.

I liked Junot Diaz' writing style and his liberal use of "bad" language. I have a pretty sever potty mouth so I loved that he does too. However, I should say that there is a quite heavy use of the "n" word. It felt right in this context because it was conversational in the way the black population seems to have reclaimed the word for use among themselves.


The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao really was a pleasure to read even with the occasional language barrier.

(finished August 15, 2013)