The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By: Junot Diaz

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell

Length: 16 hrs

Publisher's summary

Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—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 fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.

Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.

©2007 Junot Diaz (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. and Books on Tape

Critic reviews

Winner of:

The Pulitzer Prize

The National Book Critics Circle Award

The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize

A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year

One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more...

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

"An extraordinarily vibrant book that's fueled by adrenaline-powered prose... A book that decisively establishes [Díaz] as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

"Díaz finds a miraculous balance. He cuts his barn-burning comic-book plots (escape, ruin, redemption) with honest, messy realism, and his narrator speaks in a dazzling hash of Spanish, English, slang, literary flourishes, and pure virginal dorkiness." (New York Magazine)

"Genius... a story of the American experience that is giddily glorious and hauntingly horrific. And what a voice Yunior has. His narration is a triumph of style and wit, moving along Oscar de Leon's story with cracking, down-low humor, and at times expertly stunning us with heart-stabbing sentences. That Díaz's novel is also full of ideas, that [the narrator's] brilliant talking rivals the monologues of Roth's Zuckerman - in short, that what he has produced is a kick-ass (and truly, that is just the word for it) work of modern fiction - all make The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao something exceedingly rare: a book in which a new America can recognize itself, but so can everyone else." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Wonderful!

This started out like a modern day Catcher in the Rye (Hispanic version), which was fine by me. Then the author took the novel to an even higher level when he moved into Oscar's family history and how the family history was tied into the history of the Dominican Republic. The voices of Oscar's family members were powerful, and the performers captured the characters perfectly.
The book is filled with Spanglish, which enriches the reading experience and the English language. The writing is impressive.
This book changed my assumptions, beliefs and emerging understanding of Hispanic culture. One of the best books I have read and/or listened to in a long while.

this audiobook is amazing

the story. ten out of ten. the narrator.... turned it up to eleven. so good.

Oscar Wow

What did you love best about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?

This one is a s good as I'd heard it was supposed to be. It's a story that moves; it's a successful experiement in narrative form; and it's a key step forward in the evolution of the ethnic-American novel. One of the best Audible listens I've had.

Have you listened to any of Jonathan Davis and Staci Snell ’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Both read well, but I'm not sure the dual narrator experience added that much.

Wao is WOW

More spanglish, Dominican Republic history than you can imagine - pulsating, energetic with wonderful prose, narration and urgency.

Proabaly the best audiobook I have heard so far.
Diaz has a real feel for the rhythm of displaced youthful energy and ultimately the heart and need for love and belonging. Can't recommend enough -Where is The Savage Detectives on Audio???

Poor Oscar

The story was very engrossing. Lots of layers to the characters stories. Too much crass language for my taste, but necessary to evoke the proper point of view of the characters. It was used effectively.

One criticism-- I struggled with the female voice actor. Her accent in Spanish was not convincing and it threw me off when she spoke in the voice of characters who were native Dominicans.

Loved the main narrator!

Narrator was outstanding and made me want to finish the book. I enjoyed the author's integration of other classical and popular literary works that kept me researching and learning throughout the book.

Junot Diaz is a Creative Genius

If you don't mind listening to street language, this book is a literary masterpiece. Complex family relationships over a few generations intertwined within Dominican history. Eye opening descriptions of the difficult lives of Dominican families and of Oscar and his family in particular who lived under the cloud of a perceived fuku. As the reader, I loved and sympathized with poor Oscar who was struggling to find ways to bring love and friendship into his life with little success due to his quirky ways and his technological interests. Poor Oscar just couldn't fit in anywhere. Quite good. I hated for this book to end.

Intense, Violent, Sexy - a must read!

If you could sum up The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in three words, what would they be?

I just did in the headline.

What did you like best about this story?

This is a a tour de force spanning the history of the Dominica Republic since the 40's. Many years ago I read In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez and in that story I learned about the atrocities committed by Trujillo. I never forgot the story of the Mirabal sisters. It was beautiful, violent and heartbreaking. For some reason, Alvarez was able to shield me from the rawness; the open wound that was the DR under Trujillo. Junot Diaz write another tale. It is not beautiful or heartbreaking. It's raw and it hurts, at least that was the case for me. Through the lens of good vs bad or safa vs. fucu (not sure of the spelling) Diaz weaves good vs bad spells with a kind of magical realism that follows a family for generations and holds on tight until it's completed its cycle. And Oscar, poor fat nerdy Oscar is somewhere in the center of the good vs bad, comic book inspired, real life historical fact based novel. It's like the good and the bad spells are confused by Oscar and his being is both blessing and curse. He is neither strong nor weak. He is Oscar Wao, a legacy from the diaspora that took his family roots away from the DR to the US then back again. He is a result of tragedy, love and historical memory.

Which character – as performed by Jonathan Davis and Staci Snell – was your favorite?

All of them: Junior, Lola, Oscar, La Inca, Belli....they were each important to the story.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

It took me several weeks to listen to this audio because there were several moments that were moving that I had to hear it in small parts. But my favorite moment is when Oscar returns to the DR for the last time to unlock the mystery of his family's history. I was moved by his ability to finally make a move. Oscar finally makes a move and I was on his side.

Any additional comments?

I've had this book in my library for a long time now and I'm so glad I listened to it. I usually listen to a bunch of fun light chick lit so this was a change of pace. This is not the type of book I could breeze through. But as I mentioned in the headline - a Must Read!

Phenomenal!!

Would you consider the audio edition of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to be better than the print version?

I haven't read the print version, but I now plan to after having listened to the audio version.

What did you like best about this story?

The story-telling, the craftiness of the writer; it's the whole package.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I found myself listening at every free moment, staying up later, lingering in the car a little longer than necessary, playing it on my ipod while in the shower!

Any additional comments?

I loved this book so much, I'm going to listen to it again (and again!)

Loved it.

The narration was great and very easy to listen to. This book is amazing. Read it.