The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024--San Antonio

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Critics Circle Award and was named the #1 Fiction Book of the Year by TIME in 2007.  In general, I have never been greatly impressed by the Pulitzer winners, but this is the best of the lot I have read.  It has fascinating characters, hilarious moments, and so many references to popular culture that it boggles the mind to think that the author knows and retains all of this information in his mind.  The title character is an overweight, sad sack nerd supreme!  He looks like a nerd, talks like a nerd, acts like a nerd, and enters adulthood still a nerd and also a virgin who hasn't even been kissed.  And the result provides all of the many laughable moments in the book.  But the book is really about the history of the Dominican Republic in modern times as seen through the history of Oscar's family for multiple generations--before the 31-year dictatorship of Trujillo, during that dictatorship, and afterwards.  It's about the hard life that many of the people there have faced, the power and corruption of the government no matter who the ruler, and the reasons why many have left the island for a better life in the U.S., Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and elsewhere.  This novel provides far more details about the history of the DR than, in the words of the narrator, "the 2 minutes worth" that we learned in schools in the U.S.  The central family, back 3 and 4 generations ago, was among the elites of society.  One of the sons 3 generations back manages to become a doctor and to own a number of businesses although he didn't get the high society marriage he had hoped to have and eventually married his mulatto nurse. Their children, turned out to be intelligent and beautiful.  But there were beginnings of a slow downfall even though the doctor tried to avoid problems by supporting Trujillo and ignoring his strong-armed tactics.  Trujillo must have been among the worst dictators in the history of the world.  No woman was safe from being raped by him, even the wives of his government officials, and he took special pleasure in raping new brides the night of their wedding (before being bedded by the new husband).  It's fear of Trujillo's interest in one of the daughters that precipitates the greatest economic downfall of the family.  But other events lead to a belief that there is a sort of curse against the family which leads to more and more tragic events.  The book introduces Oscar and his sister Lola who are members of the latest generation living in Patterson, NJ, with a mother working two jobs to support them, then it gives the back stories for all the other characters before returning to current times.  Beyond the history lesson, however, it is the wonderfully bewildering Oscar you will love.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.