The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Diaz

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.

Reviewed by rakesandrogues on

3 of 5 stars

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I'm giving this one a three out of five for now. Rating may be subject to change. I have to say that it took me forever (well longer than usual) to read this book. It took me a while to get into the book especially because of the different storylines. It took me an even longer time to figure out who the narrator was.

Out of all the different parts, I liked Yunior's story the best. I liked his reflection of Oscar's life during his years at Rutgers. (Even if technically you could say the whole book was a reflection of Oscar's life...).

The book got a little heavy on the politics which was a little drab for me. Not my kind of thing. I haven't taken spanish in over four years so whenever the characters would switch over the Spanish, I had no idea what they were talking about almost all of the time.

I guess my experience wasn't too bad with this book. Does it deserve a Pulitzer Prize? I guess.... I'm not crazy about the book but it was alright.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 5 January, 2011: Finished reading
  • 5 January, 2011: Reviewed