*There will be "spoilers" if you really don't want to know anything about the plot of the story so beware if you haven't read it and you'd like to know nothing!
Here is the Goodreads summary:
This is the long-awaited first novel from one of the most original and memorable writers working today.
Things have never been easy for Oscar, 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, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the fukú — the ancient curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still dreaming of his first kiss, is only its most recent victim - until the fateful summer that he decides to be its last.
With dazzling energy and insight, Junot Díaz immerses us in the uproarious lives of our hero Oscar, his runaway sister Lola, and their ferocious beauty-queen mother Belicia, and in the epic journey from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights to New Jersey's Bergenline and back again. Rendered with uncommon warmth and humor, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao presents an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and the endless human capacity to persevere - and to risk it all - in the name of love.
A true literary triumph, this novel confirms Junot Díaz as one of the best and most exciting writers of our time.
Things have never been easy for Oscar, 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, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the fukú — the ancient curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still dreaming of his first kiss, is only its most recent victim - until the fateful summer that he decides to be its last.
With dazzling energy and insight, Junot Díaz immerses us in the uproarious lives of our hero Oscar, his runaway sister Lola, and their ferocious beauty-queen mother Belicia, and in the epic journey from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights to New Jersey's Bergenline and back again. Rendered with uncommon warmth and humor, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao presents an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and the endless human capacity to persevere - and to risk it all - in the name of love.
A true literary triumph, this novel confirms Junot Díaz as one of the best and most exciting writers of our time.
I read this book for The Writers of Color Book Club Goodreads group as a way to start diversifying my reading experiences. This was such a great book to start off with because the layout was so engaging of me. We got an intimate look into the lives of Oscar, his sister, his mother, his grandfather, and a bit of Yunior, the narrator and friend of the family. Being able to look into the past of the characters and get such in depth background is what I enjoy most when it comes to novels, especially family-centric ones. I also think it was necessary in this book because of the fukú, or curse, that supposedly surrounded the family and was such a generational concept.
The use of footnotes to give some background and history to the story was fantastic. It added such depth to what was going on because Diaz put these fictional characters into real-life history and it made it so much more engaging and relatable, in a sense. Although I never experienced the Dominican Republic or it's past, I had a sense of time and place to put these characters in, and it made them so, so real. Also, using the spanish/dominican spanish/slang was something I was very worried about, but it was something else that really added to the story, for me. I was able to get the general idea of a lot of what was said and it immersed me into their world and their culture.
For me, this book wasn't necessarily about the plot so much as the characters and their development. I thoroughly enjoyed the narrator and how he spoke to us about the story, but I wasn't super into finding out who it could be. I was more into his way of telling the readers about this family and how he pulled us in by saying things like "our girl" but also reminding us that we were not a part of this family or culture by using the slang so freely and loosely in his stories. This also wasn't so much about Oscar, for me at least, as it was about his family, and how when Oscar died, they all had played some part in his downfall.
There was so much in this book that I know I missed or didn't understand but it was so wonderfully written with such memorable, beautifully flawed, tragic characters and such a mesmerizing, tragic setting that I couldn't help but fall in love with it. I could go on and on and probably keep realizing things and analyzing the heck out of other things, but I will end the review here with a whopping 5 out of 5 on goodreads and a huge recommendation to read this book.
