Friday, November 20, 2009

Review of : The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz


One of the things I loved about this novel is the language of Diaz: American English, Dominican Spanish, Jersey Street Slang, and Comic Book/Fantasy Nerd Slang. These are all on display, voiced through various characters, all threads essentially leading back to Oscar.

I don't want to water down the plot by summarizing it, so I won't. I knew little to nothing about the dictatorship (though according to Diaz, dictatorship does not give him justice) of Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo's essence suffocates the novel like some kind of mustard gas attack. His spirit is on every page. Diaz likens him more than once to the lidless eye of Sauron. The feeling of being watched by pure evil makes the funny parts even funnier and the sad parts absolutely devasting.

The fact that this won the Pulitzer but regularly references Lord of the Rings (in very specific ways), role playing games, Akira, Dune, and Dragonlance, is kind of remarkable. I probably picked up on 80% of the references but damn, there are some obscure ones in here.

Highly recommended, though may not be for everyone. It has a scattered time line that can be a little confusing and some may be frustrated by the non-translated Spanish phrases and words. More than a few reviewers couldn't tolerate his use of swear words, for some reason. But Diaz easily lives up to the hype that has come to surround his work. Check out his shorter fiction in Drown if you wanna get a little taste before jumping into his novel. I just hope we don't have to wait so long for his next piece of art.

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