|
| The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | 
 enlarge | Author: Junot Diaz
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $9.45
You Save: $15.50 (62%)
New (59) Used (40) Collectible (24) from $9.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  201 reviews
Sales Rank: 877
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.8 x 2.1
ISBN: 1594489580
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594489587
ASIN: 1594489580
Publication Date: September 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: EX-LIBRARY; used item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned for refund. Buy with confidence - your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics!
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2007: It's been 11 years since Junot Diaz's critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake. This was the most dynamic, entertaining, and achingly heartfelt novel I've read in a long time. My head is still buzzing with the memory of dozens of killer passages that I dog-eared throughout the book. The rope-a-dope narrative is funny, hip, tragic, soulful, and bursting with desire. Make some room for Oscar Wao on your bookshelf--you won't be disappointed. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Product Description
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, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar 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 Fukoe-the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.
Daz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Daz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 196 more reviews...
 "I did all I could and it still wasn't enough." September 29, 2007
268 out of 281 found this review helpful
"You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest."
Meet Oscar de Leon. Once upon a time, in elementary school, Oscar was a slick Dominican kid who seemed to have a typical life ahead of him. Then, around the time he hit puberty, Oscar gained a whole lot of weight, became awkward both physically and socially, and got deeply interested in things that made him an outcast among his peers (sci-fi novels, comics, Dungeons & Dragons, writing novels, etc.). A particularly unfortunate Dr. Who Halloween costume earns him the nickname Oscar Wao for the costume's resemblance to another Oscar: playwright Oscar Wilde (Wao being a Dominican spin on the surname). His few friends are embarrassed by him, girls want nothing to do with him, and everywhere he goes Oscar finds nothing but derision and hostility. And he's not the only person in his family suffering through life: his mother, a former beauty, has been ravaged by illness, bad love affairs, and worry regarding her two children; and his sister Lola, another intense beauty, has been cursed with a nomadic soul and her mother's poor taste in men.
The kicker about the de Leon family? They just may be the victims of a bona fide curse (a particularly nasty one at that, called a fuku) as a result of their history with Rafael Trujillo, a former dictator of the Dominican Republic renowned for his brutality, and whose enemies uniformly met with disastrous ends one way or another (historical details about Trujillo and the history of his reign are scattered throughout the novel, a tidbit that may turn some off of the book, but rest assured that Diaz is so utterly entertaining a writer that they are a joy to read). The de Leons are on a collision course with disaster, but can they break the curse before it's too late?
"you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in."
Embroiled in all this mess is Yunior, our primary narrator and Oscar's former college roommate (not to mention the philandering ex-boyfriend of Lola, the novel's other narrator), whose experiences with the de Leon clan will haunt him for the rest of his life. His attempts to help Oscar become more popular fail, as do his tries to escape Oscar's grasp. "These days," he remarks at one point, "I have to ask myself: What made me angrier? That Oscar, the fat loser, quit, or that Oscar, the fat loser, defied me? And I wonder: What hurt him more? That I was never really his friend, or that I pretended to be?"
Oscar is far and away the most poignant character to come along in a great long while; in my book he's every bit as memorable as Ignatius J. Reilly, Holden Caulfield, Randall Patrick McMurphy, and other literary giants. Furthermore, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" is a phenomenal novel that is hysterical, hypnotic, heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal parts (and quite often at the same time). The plot is a madcap high-wire act balanced with astonishing dexterity by Junot Diaz. If he has a misstep it is in the denouement, which is rather sudden and slightly lacking in clarity for an otherwise thorough novel. Nonetheless, I loved, loved, loved this book. And, naturally, I highly recommend it.
Grade: A
Worth the wait..almost September 13, 2007
69 out of 86 found this review helpful
I was delighted to learn that Junot Diaz's novel was finally being published. Like so many others, I wanted more when I finished Drown 9 years ago and even read it again when he published it as Negocios. I bought Oscar Wao at my first opportunity and finished it last night before bed. It was what I had been waiting for. Diaz's voice is so original and his characters so interesting that I nearly zoomed through the book. I say "nearly" because I kept hitting speed bumps in the form of his liberal use of the "n-word". I know that the word is a part of the cultural milieu of the characters he has created and I have heard all the arguments about reclamation and empowerment. Still, I find the word jarring and distracting. It still rings of self-loathing and resignation to my middle-class moreno ears. The fact that Dominican Americans of African descent actually do often refer to themselves that way would surely make Trujillo smile.
Once I got past the hated epithet, and I did do so, I found that I loved the novel. I came to care about the characters, each of whom felt authentic. The footnotes were a great addition both for what they taught and for the social and cultural references Diaz chose not to footnote. I found myself grabbing for my Spanish-English dictionary more than once in spite of my own passable proficiency in the language. Still, I was forced live with the fact that there were phrases and references I didnt understand. That, I think, was the point. Junot Diaz's characters live in a world of blended languages, amalgamated ethnicities and blurred cultural distinctions. Sharp contrasts and right angles are dull and worse, they are lies. Oscar Wao forces us to deal with the fuzziness and twisted lines and it was great fun. I sincerely hope there is more of this perspective to come. I would even wait 10 more years for it. But, I hope I wont have to.
 Be patient, it warms up February 3, 2008
64 out of 67 found this review helpful
The story opens by exploring the life of a Oscar, a promising young Dominican child growing up in New Jersey who morphs into an overweight, unpopular way-out-there nerd who is desperate to lose his virginity. The story goes on to explore the lives of Oscar, Oscar's mother (orphaned, faced class & race discrimination, unrequited love, assault), sister (angst to leave Mother's persistent negativism and see the world) and Mother's family (persecuted by Dictator). The first half of the book was challenging to read as the author uses footnotes and many Spanish language phrases that are not translated (and frustratingly so...and perhaps herein lies the not-so subliminal message to me that I need to learn Spanish). These language challenges, coupled with the weaving back and forth from the present to the past and between multiple characters made the storyline challenging to follow and impacted my enjoyment of the story. That being said, I appreciated author's integration of the political, social and economic history of the Dominican Republic and how the environment shaped many of the lives of the generations who migrated to the U.S. Hang in there as the book warms up at p. 150 and beyond where the main characters develop very nicely.
A Family's History of the Dominican Republic January 8, 2008
30 out of 34 found this review helpful
I loved Diaz's short story collection Drown, and like almost everyone else who read it, have been eagerly waiting years for his next book. Now, something like a decade later, Diaz brings a character from that collection (Yunior) back to narrate the family history of his Rutgers roommate Oscar (who is also the brother of Yunior's sometime girlfriend). This tale begins with Oscar's grandfather and ends up encompassing quite a bit of the modern history of the Dominican Republic. And although the story hopscotches back and forth in time and location quite a bit, Diaz has complete command of his narrative.
To be fair, sometimes the story feels more like "A People's History of the Dominican Republic." than a novel about a geeky kid from New Jersey. Not that this is a bad thing -- Diaz manages to get at the political, economic, and psychological forces that brought so many Dominican immigrants to the U.S . over the last fifty years via captivating and dextrous prose. The dominant theme of this multigenerational story is the "fuku" (curse) Oscar's family lives under. (Of course, as Yunior points out, every Dominican family believes itself to be cursed by the fuku americanus, a curse brought by European colonialists which has turned the Caribbean Eden into a despotic prison to be escaped.)s The fuku first hits Oscar's grandfather, an upper-class doctor undone by the rise of the Trujillo thugocracy (equal to that of Saddam Hussein in horror inflicted on its subjects). His daughter (Oscar's mother) faces her own tragedy due to the fuku, and is the bridge between life in the D.R. and life in America, as she escapes to New York. Her children, Oscar and Lola, represent the generation born and bred in the U.S. -- both connected to, and apart from their Dominican heritage.
The story thus enables Diaz to examine how nationality, culture, and language become more and more blended over generations (non-Spanish speakers should note that the book is full of untranslated Spanish words and phrases, which can be a little frustrating at times). The segments of the book set in the D.R. under the Trujillo regime tend to be a great deal more compelling than the contemporary storyline. The story of Oscar's mother's childhood and teen years are far more colorful and dramatic than the on-again, off-again romance between Yunior and Oscar's sister Lola, and are definitely more interesting than Oscar's own geeky problems. Fat, obsessive, and devoid of social skills, Oscar makes it hard for people (including the reader) to sympathize with him and his dual dreams of becoming the "Dominican Tolkein" and losing his virginity. The final section of the book, in which Oscar pursues love with the trademark oblivious obsession that has made him an outcast, is pretty much straightforward classical doomed love, and thus the least interesting and convincing.
The overall effect of the book is a good deal more sad and depressing than I had expected. Although the title and opening chapter alert the reader to the brevity of Oscar's life, for some reason, I hadn't expected it to unfold quite as pathetically and tragically as it does. Similar tragedies unfold in the previous generations, and by the end of the book, there is little consolation of any kind to be found. Diaz writes with so much compassion for his characters that one would be hard pressed not to be affected. However, the sexual themes that pervade all the storylines act as somewhat of a life-affirming counterbalance to all the death and disappointment. And above all, there is the sheer exuberance and dexterity of the prose, which makes the book well worth reading from a purely stylistic or technical perspective. Not exactly a masterpiece, but well worth reading.
Wao as in WOW! October 17, 2007
26 out of 28 found this review helpful
Dude can write. In fact, this book is one of the most original that I've come across in a long time.
Like the layers of an onion, Diaz peels back the layers of years to reveal the back history of Oscar and his sister Lola. And what a history it is! The Banana Curtain is unveiled and the horrors of Trujillo -- the raging narcissist and despoiler of women -- are unflinchingly revealed, creating shudders of revulsion and flashes of understanding in this reader.
Junot Diaz creates a language and a tempo unlike any I've read before, peppered with Spanish colloquialisms, street talk, and video game terminology. Somehow, though, it works -- and works beautifully -- even if you don't know an "hola" from an "adios" or have never played a video game in your life (like this reader.)
I will not soon forget Oscar Wao, the 300+ pound romantic, Lola, Yunior, or his mother and the Gangster and his ill-fated grandparents. The book is compulsively readable. For all of those who say that "the novel is dead", I say: read Junot Diaz.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
