Book Review: Wow? Wao.

“The Brief And Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao”
Junot Diaz
335 Pages
Riverhead Books

I have been on a roll reading good books this year. I cull through a couple and don’t review everything I read. I review the ones I like and occasionally the ones I really hate. But this year has been good. I am sort of scared that i am going to hit a miserable stream of klunkers. Who needs that? So this book. This is a genre book. it will not grab everyone. But it should.
I am deeply suspicious of anyone who is not white, male, Protestant or Catholic and born in the United States. I always assume that these authors have nothing to say to me. I am of course, an idiot. But for the past 10 years or so there has been a rash of excellent fiction by...foreigners. I would say non-english speaking foreigners but these guys all probably run circles around most American authors. Lots of Indians, Pakistanis etc... Nice people and very insightful fiction.

One of my favorite authors, Madison Smartt Bell has taken an inordinate amount of his career to write historical fiction about Haiti. Brilliant stuff, that bores me to tears. So I was suspicious of Junot Diaz. He debuted with a book called Drown in 1996 and it was supposed to be brilliant and since then has taught and been a New Yorker contributor and all the pretentious thing a good author should do. I had no idea when I picked it up that the book had one the Pulitzer for fiction last year. I guess i should pay more attention.

It is a good story filled with magic, tension, family disfunction and a little bit of history. I did not know the story and history of Dominican strongman and dictator Rafael Trujillo but it was full of impressive lore and even more it was scary. Really scary because as much as I call Bush a Nazi the fear of living in a REAL, heavy handed dictatorship is overwhelming in this book as the good looks of a mother and daughter take them across Trujillo’s path with disastrous consequences for them and their families.

One of the daughters moved to America and has two children, a daughter and a son Oscar. Evidently Dominican men have a heavy code of sexuality and Oscar as a child was quite a ladies man but then turns into a fat pimply dork. His largest worry as he grows up is that he will die a virgin. He supplements his lack of personal life with a huge fantasy life filled with writing, comics, fantasy games and books and has...no friends. The sometime narrator of the story is one of his sister’s Dominican boyfriends and he recounts his efforts to mainstream Oscar.

The book has lots of foreshadowing a conclusion marred by Fuku is long anticipated and we are not disappointed. As the book follows Oscar, his sister, their mother and grandmother through various points in their lives there is a tragedy and beauty to all the misfortunes and pain. The book attempts to make a stab at the majesty of life and all in all I would argue that it succeeds well. This one is likely a MUST read.

9 Slingers On The 10 Scale