The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

De: Junot Díaz

Narrado por: Jonathan Davis

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

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.

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.

Wao? WOW!!!

This audiobook was, without a doubt, one of the best listening experiences I have had to date. It is the rare combination of excellent writing and excellent narration. I was captivated, start to finish. I know that some customers have expressed concern about the amount of untranslated Spanish in the novel; there is no need to worry about that--even if you do not know the exact translation of the Spanish phrases, the context in which they are used leaves no doubt as to their meaning.

Helps to know some Spanish but not necessary

Using street slang, geek slang and making literary references a beautiful, grand story is told about a family and a country.
There are many Spanish phrases used, but not knowing what they mean will not keep you from understanding the book (my level is intermediate - I understood maybe 75%). Understanding them does add some color to the narrative, but they are by no means crucial to the plot. The meanings of most can be figured out from the context anyway. To say that it's mostly in Spanish is ridiculous.
The book is vibrant and the narration was good. It tells a much larger story than its length indicates.