Book Reviews of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

I absolutely loved this book. I've never read a book that is ANYTHING like this, the language used and sense of humor was wonderful. It's a fiction story, but filled with historical footnotes (mainly dealing with with Dominican history) that puts everything in context. The book goes from one character's point of view to another, all coming together to tell the story of Oscar and his "fuku" (cursed) bloodline. If you aren't offended by cursing and sex in books, this book is a real experience and completely unforgettable.

I just finished this book and had a hard time getting through it. There are many interuptions in the story with footnotes that describe Dominican life. That was sometimes helpful but sometimes interrupted the flow of the book. The author also uses quite a bit of un-translated spanish throughout. Having had a few years of spanish, I could put it in context but if you have no knowledge of spanish, keep a language translation dictionary handy.

This book is the story of Oscar a nerdy and extremely geeky Dominican man that is struggling to find where he fits in life. Diaz explores three generations of his family and at times you aren't quite sure which family members background story we are getting. If you enjoy light reading this is not the book for you.

Fiction. * * * *. Looks at the life of an overweight, lonely nerd aspiring to be a writer and fall in love, and how his life may have been affected by an old Dominican curse. Interspersed with pop culture references and idiomatic expressions, it is both humorous and tragic.

This was an excellent story. It is written in Spanglish, but the footnotes will help you out. I couldn't put this one down.

I tried to read this book...got to page 100 and decided there are so many other books in this world that I might actually enjoy. Difficult to read because full of Spanish, so hard to follow who's story you are reading (there are 3 characters). In fact, I was never sure if they were talking about life in the Dominican Republic or America. I have no idea how in the world this book ever got a Pulitzer Prize....in fact it took me 2 weeks to read the 100 pages because it was so awful.

Never got invested in this book. I read about 150 pages into it and finally gave up. Luckily, I knew a fairly good amount of Spanish so I could follow more of it than some would be able to, but I did not know a lot of the slang used which held up the flow of reading. I was also SO frusterated by the exorbitant amount of footnotes that I ended up completely skipping them after the first 20 pages. They kept pulling me out of the story. I also did not really care about the loooong backstory with his sister and mother. I never felt like I was on a meaningful trajectory, and in the end, I abandoned the story completely. A shame.

I read the first fifty pages and skimmed the last 50. Does that count as having read the book? I couldn't get into it, but was curious how it would end...other than, obviously, Oscar would die.

I was turned off by the overly hip voice, the constant use of Spanish phrases and Dominican slang. I guess I'm too white to read this book.

I hated this book! He kept using the word Nigger, Which is not a nice way to refer to a black person.He also had explicated sex talk in there also,He also threw in Spanish and you don't know what it means you will be lost and you will need to have a dictionary to understand what he is saying. The book also has a lot of fouled mouth langue in it. I can't understand why anyone would want to read this book? I couldn't get past the first couple of chapters.

I would NOT recommend this book to anyone!

I like the fast pace & the dialogue of this book. The narrator is hip and uses Dominican slang. It's a kind of a comic-tragedy type story. Oscar is sort of a sap.

An interesting read.