Title: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Author: Junot Díaz
Length: 335 pages
Year Written: 2007
Why I chose this book: This was the third selection for my awesome-lady book club.
So, it's the fourth day of the new year and I've officially finished my first book. To be fair, I finished it late on January 3, but that brings me to my first and perhaps most important point. I intended to write this blog all day, but I worked eight hours (not at a job where you can sit and read a book at a desk), woke up twenty minutes before I had to leave for work, and then spent four hours after work watching my boyfriend build a fairy princess canopy bed for his five-year-old niece while my phone dropped it low (down to 1% in the blink of an eye and the click of a few pressing links, like the double-dick dude on Reddit). Now, it's just after midnight and I have to work tomorrow morning at 7:30. This blog has quickly transformed into a reality check. This is going to be really hard to find the time to do (as most "unnecessary" things are once you've become the fabled "adult").
I'd never read anything by Junot Diaz, though I've heard great things about his books (Drown and This Is How You Lose Her). My roommate (and book club member), who started reading before me, said that even the first three sentences were blow-your-mind good. Honestly, this book was exhausting—I closed it feeling like I'd just got fucked up by a fukú, which is the Dominican family curse this book centers around. Oscar comes from a long line of fukúed-up folk, and their stories tore at every loose-leaf sheet of soul in my notebook body. Oscar himself is fucking awkward and you know it—chances are, you know an Oscar Wao. He's in your math class, sometimes you wonder what kind of a personal or sex life he has, then you have the luxury of going home and forgetting about him.
The book is also rife with footnotes (like The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara, which I read this past September), which I didn't particularly enjoy. But there's a point Díaz is making—there's always more to a story. I also got the opportunity to test my Spanish skills—the switch between languages in this book is casual and frequent. At least I know what a 'culo' is (because that knowledge came in handy, for sure).
Anyway, if the goal of a novelist is to make you feel, then mission accomplished. I felt sorry, I felt sad, I felt awkward. I absorbed every humiliation and heartbreak. And if only for that reason, this is a great book.
Rating: 8.5/10
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