While I completely understand why this book won the Pulitzer Prize, I'd have to rate it my feelings on it somewhere from fair to good. I did like it, I found some parts absolutely captivating, but I'd also like to sit down with Junot Diaz and get some answers.In terms of tone, starting on page one, the novel kicks ass. You don't figure out who the narrator is until the middle of the book but that unknown voice is hilarious and irreverant, and peppers the beginning bits of the novel with these wise-ass footnotes where you learn all you ever wanted to know (and perhaps more) about the history of the Dominican Republic. I certainly didn't know much, just Porfirio Rubirosa and its reputation for beautiful beaches and a location on a small island with Haiti. Oh, and that they're losing the fight with Spain over which country holds the true remains of Christopher Columbus.
Seemingly the title gives the book away: On the face, it's a book about this fat Dominican sci-fi nerd called Oscar and his short life (not sure about wondrous, though). He's obsessed with Tolkien and girls and never really comes close to either one. If you believe in magic, the reason behind Oscar's bad luck is a fukú – or a family curse that's affected all of them because his grandfather dared oppose the infamous Dominican dictator Trujillo. If you don't believe, Oscar's troubles are his own fault because he never makes much attempt to change the situation. He knows he's a dork, and he's sad about being a dork, but he never makes peace with it or tries to change it. That's one of my main gripes about the book, his lack of agency. I believe in the idea of the fukú, but Oscar doesn't really know about it – so he can't blame it. He just wallows. And as a result, he becomes annoying and I never really came to see beyond it because he stays a pretty one-dimensional character. I just never cared that much about what happens to him in the end.
On the other hand, the story of his grandfather's demise and his mother's childhood and escape to America is fascinating – and reminds me of Latin American magical realism novels. Which I love. Because who doesn't need a little magic in their lives? I sure do. Anyway, the middle section of Oscar Wao is filled with the mysterious Caribbean, a brutal dictator, beautiful women, a magic Mongoose with golden eyes, a man without a face, and missing words...and reminds me of novels like Love in the Time of Cholera and The House of the Spirits.
My other gripe with the book is the use of slang – I would actually say overuse, although I couldn't find a reviewer that agreed with me. If I ever meet Junot Diaz, I'm going to ask him about it. While certainly the abundant usage of Dominican slang helps set the tone, I got annoyed with it pretty quickly. As a Spanish speaker, I didn't mind the general terms but there was quite a bit that wasn't even in the dictionary. New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani implies that it was enough to get a general sense of the meaning (she calls it, "a sort of streetwise brand of Spanglish that even the most monolingual reader can easily inhale"), but I disagree – a novel is a work of art created by words. And so if you can't grasp the intricacies of the words, doesn't that vague up the message? I don't know for sure, but it bugged me. None of my friends seem to mind it, although one said that it took her the entire book to figure out the meaning of tio, or uncle.
Oh, the other thing I would ask Junot Diaz? I would ask him what the Mongoose says at the end of the book. It gives Oscar a three-word message, but like all the "truths" in this novel, the words get swept away by the fukú, lost forever. And I'm totally curious if even Diaz knows what the Mongoose says – or if he can only guess at it.
Kakutani's review that contains way more details on the book's plot than you may want to know:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/books/04diaz.html
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