I was given a copy of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by someone who couldn’t wait to be rid of it. That’s usually a tough addition to the to-be-read stack, but I had heard so much positive buzz about the book that I had to check it out despite the poor recommendation.  As it turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I think that Oscar Wao is a wonderfully inventive novel.

The titular Oscar is a book nerd with a weight problem. Worse still, Oscar is a science fiction junkie, binging on Star Trek, Japanese manja, and fantasy role playing games. The nickname “Wao” comes from being called Oscar Wilde by someone with a heavy Dominican accent, and it sticks. Oscar has a tough time in his Dominican neighborhood in New Jersey. The title also lets us know that ultimately things are not going to turn out well for Oscar.

The novel is much more than a coming-of-age story though. It’s a mini-epic that spans the lives of several generations of Oscar’s family. It also presents a lively history of “the Dominican Republic of Rafael Leonídas Trujillo Molina, the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated…” Trujillo was a bad dude:

Homeboy dominated Santo Domingo like it was his own private Mordor; not only did he lock the country away from the rest of the world, isolate it behind behind the plátano curtain, he acted like it was his very own plantation, acted like his owned everything and everyone, killed whomever he wanted to kill, sons, brothers, fathers, mothers, took women women away from their husbands on their wedding nights and then would brag publicly about “the great honeymoon” he’d had the night before. His Eye was everywhere; he had a secret police that out-Stasi’ed the Stasi…

The story is told from the point of view of several narrators, none of which are Oscar. Yunior, responsible for the quote above, is a hip, athletic, ladies man and otherwise polar opposite of Oscar, who somehow becomes Oscar’s only real friend in college. Yunior tells his parts of the story in a distinctive urban-Spanglish-hipster style.

Like Oscar, Yunior is into books, writing, and sci-fi.  Yunior is cool enough to get away with it though, and he knows when to turn it off.  Yunior defends his use of sci fi references in his narrative by asking, “what’s more sci fi than Santo Domingo?”  The opression is so unthinkable that it must have taken place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away…

Yunior becomes a reluctant protector/big brother to Oscar while they are room mates in college. Yunior had his work cut out for him:

Trying to talk sense to Oscar was like trying to throw rocks at Unus the Untouchable. Dude was impenetrable. He’d hear me out and then shrug.

Nothing else has any efficay, I might as well be myself.

But your yourself sucks!

It is, lamentably, all I have.

The yin/yang of Oscar and Junior is one of several dualities that are presented in the book. The contrast between the hyper-sexualized macho Domincan myth embodied by Yunior and the emasculated life of Oscar mirror the power of Trujillo and the powerlessness of the Dominican Republic. Similarly, the defeminization of Oscar’s mother and sister reduces the suffering of the Dominicans to a personal level.

The ideas of fukú and zafa are another duality that are explored in the novel - curse vs. blessing. (A fukú is not your run of the mill curse. It is life altering torment that spans generations and is central to Oscar’s story.)  Fukú can spread across families and be handed down through the generations.  Fukú, or the belief in fukú, can become a prison.

Redemption through zafa can seem impossible, requiring extraordinary efforts. Yunior ends his introduction to the novel with the words, “Even now as I write these words I wonder if this book ain’t a zafa of sorts.” The question of whose zafa remains open and may even be the point of the book.

This novel will certainly be on my year end top 10 list, and I won’t be alone.  Michiko Kakutani, who seems to hate all fiction on general principle, gushed in her New York Times review:

“Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a wondrous, not-so-brief first novel that is so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets “Star Trek” meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West. It is funny, street-smart and keenly observed, ….An extraordinarily vibrant book that’s fueled by adrenaline-powered prose…

And there you have it.  Michiko and I give it two thumbs way up.

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As a bonus for actually reading all of all that:  I’m such a fan of this book that I feel compelled to pass along the copy of the book that was handed off to me.  Let me know in the comments if you’re willing to provide a good home to the book, and I’ll drop it in the mail.  I’ll pick a name at random if more than one person wants it.