The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The premise of this entire book is basically: fat nerd wants to get laid. It sounds simple, and yet there is a lot going on. We get a unique sense of Dominican history and culture, detailed histories of Oscar’s family, the mystical influence of an ongoing curse, multiple narrators and viewpoints, and a steady stream of sci-fi and comic book references. The story deals with race, masculinity, identity, cultural inheritance, family legacy, and what it means to be human in a way that is both tragic and kind of heartwarming.

For the most part, I thought it all came together really well. My biggest issue was that I found the primary narrator too irritating to fully love the book. His constant switching between more formal prose and casual slang, including frequent use of words like “dude” and “n___,” is obviously intentional, but I still found it jarring and off-putting.

Book author: Junot Díaz