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)

Cannon

A wonderful literary masterpiece for folks in the diaspora. This recording also has Diaz’s story collection, “Drown”, at the end of the novel

A great story about a misfit but read by people who don’t speak Spanish in the manner written

This book has always been the misfit’s guide on what not to do in a culture that doesn’t understand what it means to be different yet its idiosyncrasies are lost in translation by narration that doesn’t have an inkling of the spice written in these pages this book is better read than listened to hopefully someone takes the time to re-record it in the manner it was intended

Excellent

I Loved this book. It was poetic and melodic and I would recommend it to anyone. The language is a great combination of Spanish and English, and street and poetry. I can't wait to read more fromt his author.

Wondrous?

I can't decide if I liked this book. There were aspects of it the writing/execution that were interesting, e.g. the justaposition of the DR culture and the nerd culture. It was always a welcome surprise to hear references to LOTR and other sci-fi/fantasy in the middle of this tragic story. And that's what this story is -- a tragedy. There are a few comedic moments, but these are very few. It's mostly heart-breaking.

While I found Oscar a sympathetic character, his mother was not. Nearly half the story focuses on her life and that of her parents, who brought on the family curse from which Oscar comes to believe he also suffers.

I found the preoccupation with sex monotonous, but it certainly is central to the plot. It's almost funny when it's to do with Oscar's prolonged virginity, but it's also a driving force behind the demise of most of the characters.

On the upside, I thought the narrators were excellent, so it's an easy listen. However, if your Spanish is rusty, there will be a number of asides that you won't understand or will have to glean from the context.

Wow - Listen and learn

Junot is a very contemporary, very insightful writer. The narration of this audio book is excellent. The analogies and references are funny, insightful and mind opening. It is vulgar - but the vulgarity rings so true and so real that it helps to illustrate the story. I was fascinated by the way Diaz wove the contemporary references with a full historical record. I'm eager to learn more about the Dominican Republic. Awesome story line.

Fantastic narrator, very dark

This is by far the best narration job I have ever listened to. The book is written in the first person, and Jonathan Davis did a fantastic job both acting as the character narrating the book as well as changing his voice for the dialogue. That being said, the book was darker than I expected - you should be prepared for both child abuse and political torture. I am somewhat familiar with Dominican history and speak enough Spanish to understand the phrases (and sometimes whole sentences) that were not translated, so I liked the writing style, but I could see how this might be a big detraction for others. The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 was that by the end I found it a little repetitive - Oscar seemed to just keep going through the same disastrous patterns without learning anything, which I didn't find convincing. Nevertheless I was so impressed by the narrator that it hardly mattered.

outstanding

This is a brilliant novel, very well narrated. True, there is a lot of untranslated Spanish. Even though I know absolutely no Spanish, this was not an impedement to my enjoyment of this book. Very highly recommended.

Everything I was looking for

This book had everything I look for in a book -- something to challenge me, historical background, tough chicks, macho guys, quirkiness, a really, really good story. Now I know a little more about Dominican history. This is personal. Very well written and with interesting character development. I saw someone make a comparison to A Thousand Splendid Suns, and maybe a comparison can be made..but they are very different.

great but....

I was on the fence on how to rate this book. First off, I do want to say that one of the things I was wondering about was whether the fact that I don't speak Spanish would affect how well I would enjoy the book. I discovered to my pleasure that I was fine not knowing the exact meaning of the various phrases used. I could guess with some and with others it wasn't a problem just not knowing.

As for why I wasn't sure how to rate the book, it was really the ending that made it a problem for me. The writing in this book is wonderful -- it catches you from the beginning and really keeps you wanting to know more. But that's part of the problem for me. When the ending came, I felt it was a big letdown. I wanted more to it than there was. I didn't feel a sense of closure, if you will. Hard to explain without giving the ending away.

The upshot is that this is a great book, but don't expect much from the ending. And if that's more important to you than good writing and a good middle story, then think about whether it's worth the read.

disappointed

I was disappointed that I was not able to understand much of the book because it was not in english (with no translation). I was disappointed because the author is a very desriptive writer.