The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Winner of:
The Pulitzer Prize
The National Book Critics Circle Award
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize
A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year
One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more...
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.
The Pulitzer Prize
The National Book Critics Circle Award
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize
A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year
One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more...
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.
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Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say the novel offers a vivid, poignant exploration of Dominican-American life, love, and history with rich, hypnotic language and cultural dep...
Excellent book about the rule of Trujillo and his effects on the lives of many Dominicans, as well as their lives on the island and in New York over many decades. The tale of a generational curse or was it just bad luck? An overweight nerd is at the center, as the book namesake, but the story starts many years before and a few after his life and death. Junot took us a history lesson of lives in those times, in which women were seen as playthings to oversexed men, and the objects of their desires.
Poor Oscar and his cursed family. I loved the parts about Oscar's nerdom and how the author weaved it in throughout the book - like describing Dominican culture in Lord of the Rings terms, haha. However, this book was too depressing for me. It covered much of the historical corruption, violence, and trauma of the Dominican Republic that was both interesting and terrifying.
Good storytelling / devastating story / Pulitzer Prize winner / etc.
Good storytelling / devastating story / Pulitzer Prize winner / etc.
Wao is Wow! I really like Diaz's writing style and the different perspectives of the book. Good read.
Did not finish. I had a hard time with the different narrators and trying to figure out whose POV it was. I felt a lot of sympathy for the characters, but I just couldn't find myself caring that much. At the point I quit (about 100 pages from the end) I felt like we hadn't gotten very much from Oscar, who was the character I most wanted to hear from. The book supposedly is about him. Anyway, it just wasn't for me.
“...you can't regret the life you didn't lead.”
Otherness, awkwardness, comfort in ones own skin, fitting in, standing out, wanting more out of life, complicated parent-child relationships, hope, friendship, loyalty, love, first kisses, self-hatred, missed connections, regrets, politics, corruption, violence, curses, legends, last kisses, death.
All of it.
Complex and emotional, not a fun read, but very powerful.
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