Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Book #63

“It’s never the changes we want that change everything,” — Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

This is one of the books where I feel like leaving you all with a two-word review: Read it. I won’t, I’ll elaborate, but just know — those two words are sufficient. 

For a book that is so widely acclaimed, I actually managed to remain totally unspoiled, to the point where I didn’t even know what the book was about. I knew it was about an overweight nerd who wanted to be the next Tolkien, but if you’ve read the book, you know that’s not really an accurate summary of it at all.

I also wasn’t aware of Diaz’s style. He unapologetically mixes Spanish with English, to the point where got my Spanish dictionary out for a couple of words. For the most part, though, a dictionary is unnecessary, as the story line and sentence structure inform you of the meaning pretty quickly. I did wish, repeatedly, that my Spanish was better, though. I think it would’ve heightened my enjoyment of the book, although I can scarcely imagine loving it more than I did.

Finally, I thought the story would focus on Oscar the entire way through, but it went back and forth through different generations and characters, although it retained the same narrator (this helped retain a sense of consistency). I love every single part.

My ignorance of the terrible situation the Dominican Republic went through came to light. Obviously I knew they went through a tremulous time, but I had no idea of the actual events and I was a little ashamed of my ignorance. I looked it up afterwards and read up on it, but it actually made the book even more obscure — I didn’t know where fact stopped and fiction began, and that made it kind of poetic. 

It is so beautifully written. My only qualm with Diaz is that he doesn’t have a bigger catalogue for me to work through while I wait for his next novel. Drown is already in my Amazon wishlist and will purchased very soon, I’m sure.