The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season347 pages, about 7 hours: about the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbOne critic quit 60 pages in, after the tone shifted from the prologue into chapter one.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 13 reviews from critics and book blogs, 4 credit the plot and 9 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesTwo critics liken its style to García Márquez, and one also names Borges.
The case for it
on the new America
“a book in which a new America can recognize itself, but so can everyone else.”
Oscar Villalon · San Francisco Chronicle, 2007 on Yunior’s tenderness
“it is his tenderness and loyalty and melancholy that breaks the heart”
Susan Straight · Los Angeles Times, 2007 on the Tolkien echoes
“a contemporary Dominican Lord of the Rings, if you will, minus the dry middle-Earth prose.”
a book blog on Dominican Republic history
“I learned more about DR in those pages than I did in world history classes.”
a Dominican Republic forum
The case against
on the footnotes
“I HATE THEM anywhere outside of a research paper”
a book blog on Oscar’s obsessions
“his mind is only on fucking every girl he knows.”
a book blog on the missing quotation marks
“DIALOGUE IS NOT IN QUOTES”
one star · a book blog on the literary allusions
“It is as if Díaz has crammed all of them, everything he has ever read”
Sue Bond · Compulsive Reader, 2008
