Book 2 : The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

This book could have and should have been much better than it was.

The blurb on the back promised me it was a tale of an "overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien, and, most of all, finding love."

From other reviews I'd read, I knew that there was plenty of geeky Simpson's quotes, D&D playing and Harry Potter and Doctor Who references. While I'm not a fan of any of these things, I am a fan of people who are a fan of them. I was definitely intrigued and looking forward to reading it. However, it fell incredibly short of my expectations.

First of all, it's not about Oscar Wao. The narrator, who we eventually find out is Oscar's sister's boyfriend, tells the tales of several different people. Some portions of the book take place in New Jersey, others in the Dominican Republic and they span several generations. This book is rich in Dominican history, which could have been a huge selling point for me - especially because there was a lot of Cuba stuff going on in a portion of the story. However, instead of making this history a part of the text, the author used footnotes. Long, tedious, boring footnotes. Footnotes so long that they sometimes took up several pages a piece. Oscar's portion of the story was really only about 10% of the book, which was unfortunate, as his was the most compelling story.

This book was also written in Spanglish. Now, I speak a bit of Spanish. I've taken around 5 years total and lived only a few miles short of the Mexican border for more than 4 years. I can have a basic conversation, though I'm incredibly shy about it. But this? This was full on paragraphs in Spanish, many of which I believe were incorporating Dominican slang. Besides which, Mexican Spanish differs from Dominican Spanish.

I've read many books before that use a foreign language in dialouge, but are always sure to make it clear what's being said by the context around the other language. This wasn't the case in this book, and it made some parts difficult to understand.

Another problem with this book was the narrator. There was absolutely no consistency in his voice. He'd be narrating along, eloquent and well-spoken and out of no where would start with his ghetto speak. The author tries way too hard to make his narrator appear to be 'hip' but it falls flat with me. The first paragraph of the first chapter is as follows :

"Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody's always going on about - he wasn't no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock."

Then only a few sentences later he's narrating like a literate person. It was distracting and pointless, in my opinion. He also used the word, 'nigger' a lot which, ugh, I just hate. I realize that it can be used effectively and is sometimes necessary when describing certain situations or when telling a story that takes place in a certain time period. However, it felt gratuitous to me in this book.

All of that said, there were some redeeming things about this book. The story was solid, though I think it would have been better if it had been a more linear story, as the jumping around from person to person and decade to decade was a bit jarring to me. The last 10 pages were beautifully written, tight and made me wonder why he couldn't have written the entire novel with the same style.

It was definitely told in an original way, and I give Diaz credit for trying out several interesting literary techniques. However, I don't think he was quite successful.

Overall, it wasn't one of the best Pulitzers I've read, nor was it the worst. The pace was quick; there was never a moment where I was tempted to skip ahead (except during the foot notes, some of which I did skim). I don't regret reading it, it wasn't a chore to get through but I won't be reading it again.

6/10
YTD:
Books read : 2
Pages read : 696
Currently reading : The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow