The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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		List Price: $14.00		From: Riverhead Trade From: Riverhead Trade Salesrank: 39 Released: 2008-09-02
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		Pages: 352 Format: Paperback Amazon Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Customer Rating:

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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Editorial Review:
The most talked about—and praised—first novel of 2007, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

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<./I> 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.

Customer Reviews:
Read It! It's Brilliant!
Don't be misled by other reviewers. This novel is brilliant, utterly mesmerizing. Common humanity leaps out of each page, perhaps as often as a truly brilliant turn of a phrase or description of an event. Characters are vividly realized, Diaz's style actually changes to reflect the characters he focuses particular sections on, he invokes the magic of places most of us will never see and wouldn't be able to see in his way anyway. I read it in three days while in Iraq, meaning I went on maybe 90 minutes of sleep a day for 3 days or 4 days because I couldn't leave it alone (the day I finished it, I couldn't sleep because of all the feelings and thoughts running through my head--it is that powerful!).

I don't say it much but this is a must-read.

An OK read, I guess...
Not quite done... been working on this one for almost 3 weeks, which is a long time. I will read some, put it down for a few days, read a little more, put it down, etc. etc.

I will finish it, hopefully by the end of the week. Again, it is ok but I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone... I thought the Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green was a much better book, but I guess because this one incorporates so much Dominican political history it is worthy of the Pulitzer Prize?


The character development in this book is not great--- Diaz leaves you wanting more description; however, I think he does a very good job of depicting modern Dominican life, although I worry that I may be reading a a lot of stereotypes about Dominican men and women and the way they interact with eachother.

Bried and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao
This book was in excellent condition. (Not that the protagonist was.) I received it in a reasonable time and appreciate the concept of recycling.

Painful to get through...why did I bother?
This book has inspired me to post my first rating on amazon. The use of footnotes was lazy and the characters lacked any sense of depth. Miserable and unconvincing.

Just wonderful
I adored reading this book. it reads fairly fast and is filled with so many literary, historical, and social references, almost anyone can find a way to personally invest in the characters and story.

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