The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By: Junot Diaz

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell

Length: 16 hrs

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2008

National Book Critics Circle Award, Fiction, 2008

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 Fuku: the curse that has haunted 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.

Diaz 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 Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.

Also includes the bestselling short story collection Drown.

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

Critic reviews

"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)

Great, important work

What made the experience of listening to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao the most enjoyable?

This definitive work of Diaz is a great read and an important story.

Which scene was your favorite?

The characters and plot are well developed, revealing significant aspects of the Dominican past and present, as well as a deeply personal story from the perspectives of the narrators.

Who was the most memorable character of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and why?

The male narration has various pronunciation errors in Dominican Spanish and Dominican-American slang. The Dominican accents overall were definitely flawed.

READ THE BOOK

where did all the footnotes go?! I read this book when it first came out and it had crazy footnote notes. It what makes half the book

What an amazing Whirlwind of Life, Death, and Being Dominican

Junot continues to amaze and gracefully combine both the old world of Santo Domingo and Nueva York in this beautiful story of what it’s like to uncover family secrets and struggles by a first generation American, taming both the past and the present and future.

wowed by Wao

riveting story, poignant and turbulent, funny and hopeful. fantastic voice acting and very memorable characters

so good is hard to describe

first off, and this is no spoiler, this is a sad book. all of the characters lives steeped in tragedies and those shape their lives. the second, the performance is amazing, and third the writing is so heart wrenching ly good! my one and only complaint is that there is a fair amount Spanish in the story, and while beautifully performed, my rusty Spanish could not always keep up. had I been reading the book, I could have looked up the phrases.

What a sublime story

This is a fantastic story that went right to the heart of what are meant to be Oscar. painted beautiful pictures with words and took us into his universe from a friends perspective. I loved it.

Riveting

Anyone that has ever spent time in the tri state area or has struggled with identity (especialmente nuestra gente) absolutely must experience this generational novel.

Wondrous Book!!!

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (TBWLoOW) deserves every star that I can give it and its narrator. This is not a book I would have selected to read on my own. Had it not been a monthly selection of my local book club, I would have missed it and what a loss it would have been.

This is a book about a weird (just happens to be Dominican) kid growing up in Patterson, New Jersey. Coming from that part of the world myself, I can relate that much but not That much... I’m not Dominican and that’s a whole lot of what this book is about. TBWLoOW explores growing up in that part of the world and also the life of family members in the Dominican Republic under a brutal dictatorship. This book is about so many things. It’s about what it often means to be a nerd... to being a male virgin, to growing up in the New World in a family with Old World values. One might say the book’s about the Fuku, the superstition or curse of an insane, cruel dictator but that’s really only the thread that pulls all the fabric of this wonderful story together. TBWLoOW contains many stories that are all beautifully woven into one incredibly well-crafted book.

The passion and the authenticity of the author comes across in every page. There is humor and pathos sometimes in the same sentence but it is delivered so smoothly and, by the narrators, with such grace it becomes masterful. The narrators Staci Snell and particularly Jonathan Davis are extraordinary readers. The protagonists, POV and person change back and forth throughout the book. The narrators keep them straight for us in our minds and there is never any ambiguity. Frequent changes between first and third person can sometimes challenge the reader/listener; again, not here. The book is just a masterpiece. I am tempted to say read this book especially if you are _____ (fill in the blank) but that might dissuade someone else from reading it. This book has something for everyone.

Unfortunately, I read lot of crap. Just look at so many of my other reviews. This book just goes to show that we do not have to go back to another century to discover a truly gifted author.

Truly Fantastic

Junot Diaz has somehow concatenated the best of Latin magical realism, Star Trek, and J.D. Salinger with a no-holds-barred look back at the ruthless rise to power of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and the lasting effects of that legacy in the Dominican diaspora today. The resulting story is a riveting combination of love, defiance, and perseverance that will make you laugh out loud one minute and weep the next. Truly a fantastic piece of modern literature.

I really wanted to like this book...

Always afraid to flitter away my credits, I picked this book because it was recommended by the Editor's Picks. I didn't dislike it but did not connect to it the way I had hoped. It isn't the Kite Runner (or Thousand Splendid Suns), or the Time Traveler's Wife or Pillars of the Earth but not a bad read. I am sure that other's really loved this book - I just wasn't one of them.