The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Would-Be Dominican Tolkien-- Oscar de Leon, AKA Oscar Wao (a mocking nickname given him when he dressed up for Halloween like Dr. Who but was said to look like Oscar Wilde) is sure no stereotypically aggressive, confident, womanizing young Dominican man! Instead, he’s a morbidly overweight uber-nerd, deeply and comprehensively into Dungeons and Dragons and sf and fantasy and anime books, tv shows, movies, and the like. His dream is to become the Dominican Tolkien, his fear to die a virgin. Junot Diaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) relates Oscar’s story, as well as those of his potent and rebellious sister Lola, his potent and hardworking mother Belicia, his impotent and refined grandfather Abelard (a doctor!), and their roots and lives in the Dominican Republic in the past and in Paterson, New Jersey in the “present” of the historical fiction, moving around in time and place from the 1940s to the 1990s. Diaz also works into his novel the background and life of the narrator of the novel, Yunior de Las Casas, a well-meaning, weightlifting, and philandering Dominican who befriends Oscar and dates his sister (and who DOES become a writer). Because of Oscar’s interests and Yunior’s attempts to understand them, the novel is full of references to LOTR and a host of other fantasy and sf works, characters, and games (Dune, Watchmen, Akira, Gary Gygax, Gormenghast, Galactus, Jack Kirby, Stephen King, Twilight Zone, etc.), like “Oscar had like a zero combat rating,” and “… when Gondolin falls you don’t wait around for the balrogs to tap on your door. You make fucking moves.” And because of the Dominican characters and narrator etc., the novel is also full of English swear words and Spanish expressions, some of which are understandable from the context, some not, all of which give it an interesting spicy-Spanish-Nerd flavor, as in “Her name was Ana Obregon, a pretty, loudmouthed gordita who read Henry Miller.” The book begins with the "author" Yunior introducing the Dominican concept of fuku, a curse/doom that can nail a person or an entire country. He recounts Dominican history featuring the 20th-century tyrant Trujillo, “the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated,” a leader for whom the country “was his very own private Mordor.” When you include President Johnson invading the Dominican Republic in 1965, the Vietnam debacle may be understood as a fuku coming home to roost in America. Anyway, in the novel the main target/victims of the fuku are Oscar de Leon and his family. **Note: we know from the title and other hints from the narrator that Oscar is going to die young; part of the suspense in reading the book lies in wondering when/how it will happen. I liked the book a lot, but I found the parts set in the Dominican Republic most absorbing and interesting, because I had been totally ignorant about the country and its history, starting with how the Spanish treated the indigenous people there and running up through the assassination of Trujillo (the Sauron of the DR, though his death sure didn’t lead to any kind of a utopia). The contrasts between the cultures of the Dominican Republic and of the USA are striking. The parallels between what Belicia and Oscar experience in the Dominican Republic decades apart from each other have a powerful and awful irony (Lola makes a terse and devastating condemnation of Dominicans at one point: “We’re ten million Trujillos”). By contrast, I did not care SO much for the parts featuring Oscar in Paterson or at Rutgers etc., because he can be too self-centered, self-destructive, self-pitying, and inveterate a nerd, and I could have done with maybe one or two fewer of his attempts at romantic relationships. I found myself much more interested in the plights of Abelard and Belicia in the Dominican Republic than of Oscar in Paterson. It's a funny but sad novel with a wonderfully distinctive voice. Lin Manuel-Miranda reads his parts of the audiobook splendidly (those with a male narrator), though I have a hard time picturing him as black. Karen Olivo reads her parts (those with a female narrator) well, too. And the interesting footnotes from the physical novel ARE read in the audiobook. View all my reviews
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