The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I would have likely given this one star if it hadn’t given me such a great chuckle at the end. The joke was clearly on me, the reader. It seems that “life” in this book is just a metaphor for getting laid and, ultimately, nothing good comes of getting laid. We’re all fúku’d.
I jest. Sort of.
I adore post-colonial and ethnic lit (hey, it was my focus in college) and I appreciate the new voice and talent that Díaz brings to the genre. Still, there were some things that annoyed me. For example: Not using quotation marks when you’re quoting what others say. That isn’t “experimental” or “bold” in literature. It’s lazy. Quotation marks are nothing more than visual cues, I know, but still…
Secondly, the footnotes, at first, were quaint. I liked them. They were definitely experimental in that they weren’t footnotes at all but more information that, for whatever reason, needed to be shared via a “footnote.” After a while, though, it occurred to me that I really didn’t need to read them to keep up with the forward-moving plot. So, I began to skip them after I got about halfway through the book.
Finally, I was frustrated with the Spanish. I don’t behoove Díaz for including Spanish. After all, I minored in French and don’t get disgruntled with Danticat when she challenges me with a little Haitian kreyol or some Senegalese-American intermingles French throughout his text. The Spanish was perfect for the characters and the story. For me, though, I just didn’t understand it and, unlike the footnotes, the Spanish seems to have been critical to the story. I didn’t want to put down the book every other paragraph to look up a translation online. A glossary would’ve been handy or, dare I say it, even another footnote.
As a whole, this is an interesting story that I have no doubt will find its way into the American cannon. I did enjoy it. Really. I did. It’s just that I probably would’ve enjoyed it more if it weren’t for these three things irritating me so damn much. Now, what did I love about it?
The Dominican swaggerness. The magical realism. All of the extremely dynamic characters were interesting. The women were phenomenal. I wish there had been more development around La Inca’s character. In fact, I think I found all of the characters entertaining and interesting, except for Yunior; he was annoying and I wish he’d been fúku’d, too. After all, he was the one getting more fúku, sexually speaking, than anyone else.
I jest again. Sort of.
Love your review of this
You might remember that I really liked the book but I can totally see your little aggravations with it. I thought, at times, it was hard to tell which character we were dealing with but I found myself so forgiving of that because I thought the characters and the writing were so fascinating. i do want to pick up his short story collection to see what it is like.