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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By Junot Diaz

(155)

| Paperback | 9781594483592

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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz 304pp, Faber, £12.99 Junot Díaz's first book, Drown (1996), detailed the lives of children in the Dominican Republic and, later, of young men and their difficult parents in New Jersey's immigrant ghe ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

Home Contact us Posts Comments There are lots of reasons why this novel shouldn’t work: the liberal use of colloquial Spanish throughout the text; the extensive footnotes going in to intricate detail about the history of the Dominican Republic; the c ... (read full critics)

bookgeeks published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

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15 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

Junot Diaz, and his various characters, have a refreshingly different way of looking at the world, whether they find themselves inthe suburbs of New Jersey or the cane fields of the Dominican Republic. This book is particularly good on atmosphere and great on the 20th century history of the D R.

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Top of the pile said on Apr 1, 2012 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Read it in Spanish and loved the Dominican slang used. The transgenerational angle was also quite fun as well as the turbo-language. Will definitely keep on reading books form Diaz

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eva said on Apr 16, 2010 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

A Dominican family saga from the island to New Jersey and back. People and events in Dominican history explained in terms of sci-fi and fantasy - one for all, Trujillo as Sauron. A mixture of English and Spanish that goes beyond Spanglish. It's one of the strangest books I have ever read, but I enj ... (continue)

A Dominican family saga from the island to New Jersey and back. People and events in Dominican history explained in terms of sci-fi and fantasy - one for all, Trujillo as Sauron. A mixture of English and Spanish that goes beyond Spanglish. It's one of the strangest books I have ever read, but I enjoyed reading it very much!

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ary29 said on Oct 8, 2009 | Add your feedback

Gotta love a book whose protagonist's second favourite anime is Robotech (though, Diaz, it's Rick Hunter, not Rich Hunter). The style is fresh, but the philosophy is weak. Have sex, and your life has meaning and is not a complete waste. Shallow.

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Stefan Garcia said on Apr 29, 2012 | Add your feedback

An awesome writing style!

If the plot of Dìaz's story is good, it is the writing style that makes it a must read!
Continuous use of slang, colloquialisms, Spanish words and expressions, references to comics, fantasy books and contemporary culture make it for a very peculiar style, that still manages to be easy to read and pe ... (continue)

If the plot of Dìaz's story is good, it is the writing style that makes it a must read!
Continuous use of slang, colloquialisms, Spanish words and expressions, references to comics, fantasy books and contemporary culture make it for a very peculiar style, that still manages to be easy to read and perfectly fluent. The addition of historical notes are the ultimate touch that makes it special, being a brief explanation of Dominican history in a hilarious tone, where usually notes tend to be serious and more academic.
It is written, some would say, in a very post-colonialist way, mixing the language of the host country (here: the US) with that of the country of origin of Oscar and his family. For those who can read both English and Spanish, it is clear that the use of some expressions make way more sense in Spanish that it could have made in English. It is interesting to see how it is not only the characters that reflect their Dominican origin in their way of behaving, but also the story teller while he talks to the reader (the story teller himself being of Dominican origin).

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Tado said on May 12, 2011 | Add your feedback

This book makes me doubt my own comprehension skills - why is everyone praising it when I can't even understand what the writer's point is? Alright, I give him credit for his distinctive writing style (here "distinctive" refers to his idiosyncratic back-and-forth switching between English and Spani ... (continue)

This book makes me doubt my own comprehension skills - why is everyone praising it when I can't even understand what the writer's point is? Alright, I give him credit for his distinctive writing style (here "distinctive" refers to his idiosyncratic back-and-forth switching between English and Spanish) and his asides about Dominican history, but that's it. Oscar is an interesting character and I want to read more about him, so why devote such large sections (at least half of the book!) on his sister, mother, grandmother, etc? They're relevant to a certain degree, but I don't need to know all about their childhood.
Junot Diaz may be a cool writer, but he is still miles from being a good storyteller.

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Holmes said on Oct 22, 2010 | Add your feedback