Book Club Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Que?

From Amazon's description:

The most talked about—and praised—first novel of 2007, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

"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 Fukœ-the curse that has haunted the 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."

 

     Before I can even begin my review, I feel the need to vent about books so heavily peppered with a language other than English that they require a separate guide. Seriously, take a gander at this: annotated-oscar-wao.com. Read the stated reasons for making such a resource in the first place: because without it one runs the risk of missing out on half the story. And this from a fan. Diaz's writing is effing amazing, there's no argument here. But I'm not blindly enraptured. 

     Do you remember listening to that Snow song "Informer", bobbing your head to the beat, amazed dude was able to rap so fast, and completely in the dark about what he was singing? That's what reading this book felt like. And like my nose was being rubbed in the author's smug, self-proclaimed "otaku" status. I mean, unless you're a very specific kind of person the book seems a bit... inaccessible. And the footnotes the book is crammed with were far more jarring and derailing to my reading experience than helpful.

     HOWEVER- They don't hand out Pulitzers to just anyone. There's a reason Diaz walked away with one, along with a National Book Critics Circle Award. I'm just not the person to tell you. The narrative was a parade of my pet peeves as a reader, but sung in a voice I couldn't help but love. The story is great, the characters(except Oscar and his grandfather) are compelling, likable, and familiar. And the portrait of this culture seems fair and, as far as I know, accurate. There's beauty and ugliness, both in spades. I dunno, this  book won't ever be on my list of favorites, but I understand why others might cherish it.