The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really didn’t know what to expect from this book.
When I started reading it, I was sure I was going to slog through it and finish it out of a sense of obligation, but I just could not put it down.

By the end of the novel, I was so emotionally invested in every character. Even characters I hates at the beginning ended up being much fuller, rounder characters than I anticipated. Some people seem to have an issue with the use of slang, but to me, it seems authentic to the narrator of the story and did not detract from the beauty of the novel for me.

I did read Oscar as a little bit of a “nice guy” who whines constantly about not getting laid, but no one in this story is laid out as a hero. I don’t see this as Diaz trying to make Oscar an infallible being.

Also as a side note, I finished this book while giving high schools juniors a midterm exam and cried in front of all of them, so don’t read in public.

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