The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Or "It's Not You, It's Me"

I mean it when I say that The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was a great book. I really do. It’s fresh, energetic, full of achingly beautiful characters, and written so seamlessly you’d think it was the transcript of an interview. It’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, for God’s sake. So I mean it. Honestly.

But at the same time that my brain agrees with and supports the accolades all over the front and back cover of this book, I never really got emotionally sucked in. I’ve been brainstorming about why is, and here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. Oscar Wao contains a TON of Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish, which led me to either look the words up, guess what they meant, or skip ahead and just keep going. The use of Spanish in the book is brilliant and wonderful, but since I couldn’t just read straight through it I found myself chopping up Junot Diaz’s smooth, conversational narration with frequent trips to Google translator. (On a positive note, now I know about 600 Spanish words for "vagina.")

2. Oscar Wao contains a TON of references to Sci-Fi/Fantasy things. As someone who doesn't have a lot of experience with the genre, I also didn’t fully understand these.

If Oscar Wao is the kind of book that you connect with, you’ll really connect with it. Even if not, it’s a very worthy read, for no other reason than to check out Junot Diaz. This is his debut novel, and if it’s any indication of things to come, the literary world is in for quite a treat.

Final Rating: 7/10