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 enlarge | Author: Junot Diaz
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $13.74
You Save: $11.21 (45%)
New (59) Collectible (19) from $13.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  170 reviews
Sales Rank: 185
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.8 x 2.1
ISBN: 1594489580
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594489587
ASIN: 1594489580
Publication Date: September 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Absolutely Brand New & In Stock. 100% 30-Day Money Back. Direct from our warehouse. Ships by USPS. 1+ million customers served-In business since 1986. Happy Customers is Our #1 Goal. Toll Free Support
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| Customer Reviews:
 FUKU and other words Do Not Make Great Literature August 12, 2008
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
Does anyone doubt that FUKU phonetically indicates the curse of figurative sexual intercourse as either the recipient or the giver, that one may name call if one seeks an identity with an entity, and "roots" promotes UFUK, as in Yunior to Oscar.
Diaz's book, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" is a wonderful example of how throwing together some trash talk and a little cultural "home", can impress self appointed litterati. Those who desperately need attention to be "on." Diaz has pulled off a coup of the greatest magnitude, ala James Joyce and Finnegan's Wake, in helping to unseat literature as an art form. But, he can jive and put a boogey story with it.
A wild ride worth taking August 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This messy, self-absorbed work of genius is composed of intertwining stories about a supposedly-cursed family from the Dominican Republic and living in New Jersey. The primary character, Oscar Wao, is a young social outcast, interested in role-playing games, writing fantasy novels, and finding love, in equal measures. At times, it is difficult to keep up with the shifting points of view, narrative voice, magical occurrences, and chronology. Also, I was repeatedly frustrated by the dense footnotes and the numerous, untranslated Spanish and Spanglish phrases. A wild ride worth taking but only if you have the patience.
 great book August 8, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
great book, great condition... delivery was not as fast as i expected it to be...
this year's stunning Modernist Romance August 8, 2008
Fantastically well-written (from multiple perspectives and with a poetical mixture of footnotes and slang) story of a big nerdy guy looking desperately for love. A mythic story spanning generations of Oscar's Dominican family, including his run-away sister and his orphaned beauty mother. With its subject matter, character, and style, it is very similar to other recent great contemporary/modernist/Romantic novels The Shipping News and Everything is Illuminated. Powerful and thoroughly engaging story with fascinating and charming characters and a truly wondrous style. Grade: A
The Story of a Curse August 3, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Can a family be cursed? Can an entire country be cursed? Yes, and yes -- according to Junot Diaz. His inventive THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO chronicles a family tagged by a curse called "fuku" and a nation dragged down by a decades-long curse called "Trujillo," as in the dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961.
What starts off as a coming-of-age novel for a 300-plus pound Dominican Republic boy in Jersey with a penchant for fancy vocabulary, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and Marvel comics, evolves into a family saga that not only follows big Oscar, but envelops his lovely sister Lola, her philandering boyfriend Yunior, his bigger-than-life (both her breasts and her personality, it appears) mother, Beli, and his grandfather, Abelard (allusions, anyone?).
It all adds up to an entertaining romp through the Garden State and the first Caribbean island to be discovered in the new world. Oscar's goals are simple: to kiss a girl and to make love with one. Only it's not so simple when you're obese and could serve as president of World Nerds, Inc. Even his nerdy friends eventually score, but Oscar is left with his own misery, his overprotective sister, and his hell-on-wheels mother. The novel evolves into a family saga when Diaz artfully envelops the history of the mother and her father (Oscar's abuelo) in the Dominican Republic. These riffs show the roots and the tenaciousness of fuku as the novel wends its way to an inexorably tragic end.
Some readers may be put off by Diaz's excessive riffs in Spanish, but the use of the language says much about the DR, about American history, about Westerners (the dominant culture), and about the diaspora's need to adapt to English (the Spanish turns the table on English-speaking readers, you see). Others may be put off by the lengthy footnotes about Trujillo and Dominican history and atrocities. Nevertheless, the book's strands all weave together nicely, and Oscar's love is so sweet and foreign to "normal people's" interpretation of that emotion's potentials and limits that the ending, no matter how predictable, is unarguably perfect. Diaz is a talented modern voice and his subject matter is refreshingly different for those bored with the same old suburban American "drawing room" dramas. Give it a try. Like me, you might find it funny, sad, and -- for lack of a better word -- wondrous...
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