The Brief Wondrous Review Of Oscar Wao

Put simply, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is a novel about a lonely young man’s search for love and acceptance. Put slightly more complicatedly, it is a novel about the way family and history have the ability (both actively and latently) to shape a life. Either way, this marvelous first novel by Junot Díaz had me at hello. The book opens with an epigraph from the Fantastic Four. Sure, the page that follows has an epigraph from a more highbrow source, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, but it was the first, “low-culture” nod that hooked me. The novel is full of (at times overwhelmingly so) “low-culture” references. Just like the epigraphs, however, they are juxtaposed with more literate (I suppose it depends on your definition of “well read”) references: Garcia Márquez rubs elbows with “The Matrix,” while Tolkien’s lore competes for footnote space with actual history of the Dominican Republic. Most readers probably won’t catch every reference, but that’s OK: “Wao” is a novel about abstruseness, it is a novel about being an outcast, and the many cultural allusions, both high and low, help to give the novel a unique voice and sense of character. The nerdy references aside, what struck me the most is the compassion with which Díaz handles his protagonist. Oscar (whose last name is not really Wao, but De León) is an obese, nerdy, friendless bookworm. He would be easy to loathe or pity, but the narration cares and, ultimately, empathizes with him. Oscar’s love story at the core of the novel is not particularly happy, but it has levity. Oscar’s spirit is (nearly) indefatigable, and the reader is given occasion to laugh with Oscar as much as we laugh at him. The primary narrator of the story (there are several shifts) is a young man named Yunior (I believe that Yunior is semiautobiographical, something of a residual self-image of Junot Díaz himself). Yunior is an on-again-off-again boyfriend of Oscar’s sister, Lola. He is also, and here there is room for debate, Oscar’s one true friend. Through Yunior’s omniscient narrative, rife with streetwise slang, Spanglish, and those cultural allusions, we come to learn the story of not only Oscar, but of the De León family. Oscar’s life is brief. But it is also wondrous. That wonder shines through when Díaz departs from Oscar’s tale to tell us stories of the other De Leóns. Oscar’s Grandfather is a wise and revered doctor in the Dominican Republic, who battles to keep his beautiful daughters from the lecherous grasp of the evil Dictator Trujillo (readers who know nothing of Caribbean history will be brought up to speed by Díaz’s clever footnotes). Oscar’s Mother grows up fatherless in the Dominican Republic and journeys to the USA to raise two children, husbandless. And Lola returns to the Republic as a spirited and rebellious teenager, learning patience from her Grandmother. Each history is rich with humor and heartbreak. No character in the novel

has an easy road through life, but each reaches his or her destination for better or for worse. Through these interweaving stories, each strong enough to stand on its own, Díaz paints the portrait of a life: a life, like most lives, that is not confined to one person. It is a life that draws a little something from everyone and everything that it touches. And that life is bound to be wondrous, no matter how brief.