Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Family's History of the Dominican Republic, 8 Jan 2008
I loved Diaz's short story collection Drown, and like almost everyone else who read it, have been eagerly waiting years for his next book. Now, something like a decade later, Diaz brings a character from that collection (Yunior) back to narrate the family history of his Rutgers roommate Oscar (who is also the brother of Yunior's sometime girlfriend). This tale begins with Oscar's grandfather and ends up encompassing quite a bit of the modern history of the Dominican Republic. And although the story hopscotches back and forth in time and location quite a bit, Diaz has complete command of his narrative.
To be fair, sometimes the story feels more like "A People's History of the Dominican Republic." than a novel about a geeky kid from New Jersey. Not that this is a bad thing -- Diaz manages to get at the political, economic, and psychological forces that brought so many Dominican immigrants to the U.S . over the last fifty years via captivating and dextrous prose. The dominant theme of this multigenerational story is the "fuku" (curse) Oscar's family lives under. (Of course, as Yunior points out, every Dominican family believes itself to be cursed by the fuku americanus, a curse brought by European colonialists which has turned the Caribbean Eden into a despotic prison to be escaped.)s The fuku first hits Oscar's grandfather, an upper-class doctor undone by the rise of the Trujillo thugocracy (equal to that of Saddam Hussein in horror inflicted on its subjects). His daughter (Oscar's mother) faces her own tragedy due to the fuku, and is the bridge between life in the D.R. and life in America, as she escapes to New York. Her children, Oscar and Lola, represent the generation born and bred in the U.S. -- both connected to, and apart from their Dominican heritage.
The story thus enables Diaz to examine how nationality, culture, and language become more and more blended over generations (non-Spanish speakers should note that the book is full of untranslated Spanish words and phrases, which can be a little frustrating at times). The segments of the book set in the D.R. under the Trujillo regime tend to be a great deal more compelling than the contemporary storyline. The story of Oscar's mother's childhood and teen years are far more colorful and dramatic than the on-again, off-again romance between Yunior and Oscar's sister Lola, and are definitely more interesting than Oscar's own geeky problems. Fat, obsessive, and devoid of social skills, Oscar makes it hard for people (including the reader) to sympathize with him and his dual dreams of becoming the "Dominican Tolkein" and losing his virginity. The final section of the book, in which Oscar pursues love with the trademark oblivious obsession that has made him an outcast, is pretty much straightforward classical doomed love, and thus the least interesting and convincing.
The overall effect of the book is a good deal more sad and depressing than I had expected. Although the title and opening chapter alert the reader to the brevity of Oscar's life, for some reason, I hadn't expected it to unfold quite as pathetically and tragically as it does. Similar tragedies unfold in the previous generations, and by the end of the book, there is little consolation of any kind to be found. Diaz writes with so much compassion for his characters that one would be hard pressed not to be affected. However, the sexual themes that pervade all the storylines act as somewhat of a life-affirming counterbalance to all the death and disappointment. And above all, there is the sheer exuberance and dexterity of the prose, which makes the book well worth reading from a purely stylistic or technical perspective. Not exactly a masterpiece, but well worth reading.
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27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ironic verdict on the Dominican Republic, 2 April 2008
This is a good book. I'm English, not merely old but "old school", so a full-length novel written in "hip" American ghetto slang and liberally peppered with Spanish terms and phrases unknown to my large Collins Spanish Dictionary, and with a heavy reliance on references to science and fantasy fiction and comic books (all of which I despise), I would not usually touch with a barge-pole, but I loved this one and neglected my other duties until I had finished it.
I have read most of the ninety-odd reviews of the book on Amazon UK and US and I think that many readers miss the point when they complain that the title is a misnomer because only a small part of the book describes Oscar's "life" and that while he may be a physically well-rounded person his character is flat and clichéd. The title surely is ironic. Oscar has really neither a life or a personality to speak of. He is just a peg on which to hang an analysis of Dominican society on the island and in New York, which the author perceives to be generally nasty. It is Dominican "culture" itself which is the "fukú" and bad things and bad people will inevitably surface because the whole fabric is built on rotten foundations of ignorance, greed and racism. You could almost say that the heart of the book is in its historic footnotes.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Wondrous Book That Ought Not to Work, 19 Mar 2009
On the surface, 'Oscar Wao' has little going for it. One of its main characters is an overweight Sci-Fi-Fantasy Nerd, there are numerous quotes from the 'Lord of The Rings', the author takes liberties with conventional grammar, the text has Spanish words sprayed through it with alarming regularity and there are endless footnotes on a country I knew almost nothing about. It just shouldn't work as a novel, but it does; extremely well.
The novel is narrated by a family friend and focuses on three generations of San Dominican immigrants, who now live in New Jersey. Being an overweight fantasy nerd myself, I particularly enjoyed the tragi-comedy of the sections that dealt with Oscar, but all of the narratives have much to recommend them.
The stories of 'Beli', Oscar's mother and grandfather Abelard, are really an examination of despotic cruelty. I had never heard Rafeal Trujillo; he may have been a relatively small player in World history but as Diaz reveals, Trujillo and his henchmen cast a dark shadow over the Dominican Republic for thirty years. The stories of Oscar and sister Lola, deal with the aftermath of a dictatorship, and the reality of life as an immigrant, in even the most cosmopolitan of melting pots. All four stories are well balanced and beautifully drawn.
This novel is not without its flaws. The repeated references to fantasy and comic book fiction, I imagine would grate on a reader not familiar with the genre. The unusual use of punctuation, particularly around dialogue, seemed entirely gratuitous and was occasionally confusing. My main gripe though, was the repeated use (mainly in Lola's tale) of colloquial Spanish. This was not only off-putting but also meant I often lost the sense of an entire sentence. All of these factors together ought to have made for a terrible novel, and it is testment to the quality of Diaz's writing, the strength of his story and his vivid characters that all times 'Oscar Wao' remains a compelling read.
Above all this is a novel about fate; were Oscar's family cursed or were they the architects of their own downfall? According to Diaz the San Dominicans are great believers in destiny, but his novel artfully shows, that for the oppressed, a difficult life often offers very few alternatives. This novel may have its flaws but it is powerful, important and above all, well worth reading.
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