Because in my brain there is a sharp-edge precise hierarchy of the MODERN CLASSICS (read in the most recent years*), and because this book is newly minted therein:1ST...........MIDDLESEX2ND...........THE CORRECTIONS3RD...........WORLD'S END4TH (TIE).....ON BEAUTY/THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE...I mean, surely this is a book to join the others. It's about pretty much the same thing as those others: it deals with the Family Odyssey. Theme of the decade..? Half century? I subscribe to the belief that nowadays the family chronicle, the history that lives within a single human, event, thing... well, all that is what readers wanna read & Pulitzer givers prize.Oscar Wao is about several things, but the main family curse, that which honors the BRIEF part (SPOILER ALERT this ain't) in the title, is the centerpiece. Golly how I love family curses (duh: American Gothic is about as cool, to me, as the French New Wave). Anyway, it all amounts to this: Oscar is unique not because he is a social pariah in many many many ways. He is unique because his family history is unique, rich, relevant. This would be a mixed media piece were it in an art gallery. This very dexterous Dominican-american author talks about the DR like Arenas talks about Cuba in "Antes que anochezca." The sass, the voice, the whimsical style... this is what won the novel its many awards. People are impressed by this exciting work and to them all I say please read those on my list (mmm...places 1-3) before you hail this a masterpiece. It is almost one, and I will even say that it is way more readable, and yes, much more relevant to Mexico (and me) than the other aforementioned novels. That I read it in two days, only because I had to sleep... well, that says more about it than I can try to describe.* circa late 2009, nine years ago!--this is HUGELY outdated, readers!

Bullet Review:"WAHHHHHH! My life is so horrible!! I'm 100+ pounds overweight, have no friends, and have never gotten laid!! Especially to some fine b!tch with huge tits! The one time I "tried", the girl was in an abusive relationship with a d-bag. I was TOTALLY the Nice Guy; she should have gone with ME!!! Now I will whine and do nerdy things, and occasionally mention them so that the cover blurb saying I'm the Dominican Tolkien won't be 100% inaccurate."If this is what you want to read, go ahead, be my guest. But you know what? I WAS an overweight, friendless, dateless, sexless teenager and young adult. I buried myself in books and science fiction and college classes withOUT having to be constantly whining about the dates I wasn't getting (oh and objectifying every single set of tits out there). And you know what? My life has turned out awesome. You know why? Because I decided that *I* wanted to make my life awesome.I honestly was hoping to expand my reading tastes, to read about a Dominican guy who wanted to be like Tolkien. I was excited as this guy and I shared a love for geekdom. But if I need to wade through a boy (because Oscar is NOT a man in my book) who just wants to wallow in self-pity and whine about not having sex, no. Absolutely not. I really don't care in the slightest to read some dumb @$$ who can't grow the f@#$ up and deal with it; in fact I lack the number of fingers (zero) to show how many f$&@s I give about the so-called "Brief Wondrous Life" of this massive (har!) tool. I know I ought to TRY to get past 15% for my Book Club, but seriously, this is NOT WORTH my time.(Thanks to my fellow book club member who sacrificed her sanity and DID finish this to warn me away while I still had the chance.)

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold. J.R.R. Tolkien.Oscar Wao is a wonder of nature. A nerd. Weirdo. Freak. This is the story of an outcast and his travails. A free spirit who speaks in sci-fi gibberish and aspires to become the Dominican J.R.R.Tolkien. His isolation is as massive as his 307 pounds and his inglorious virginity. His intelligence as fierce as his lascivious gluttony. His wit as vigorous as his passion for books and his need for love and validation. Life has never been easy for this obese, kind-hearted and ill-omened young man who lives with his scarred mother and his obstinate sister Lola in a crime ridden ghetto in New Jersey. He gulps down fear of rejection and his tremendous vulnerabilities and puts himself at risk with reckless abandon in a daredevil quest to find love, to feel joined to another human being, to project his long denied humanity in another person. Beware of fukús though. These evil shadows, Mordor-like, lurk in every corner and have cursed Oscars family for generations, sending them to prison, exposing them to tragic accidents, condemning them to unbearable heartbreak. Will this Dominican superstition obliterate the flickering candle of hope that casts light upon Oscar's doomed future? Is there really a curse or only life and bad choices that can prove fatal? Oscar simply got under my skin, tight and secretive as a plot.In taking his hand one doesn't only sign up for an exotic stroll in the labyrinthine paths that delineate plural identity, eluding geopolitical and cultural boundaries but also for a journey into the collective memory of the Trujillo's dictatorship era and a glimpse into the muted crimes, corruption and genocide committed in the Dominican Republic of the sixties.Junot Díazs acerbic use of the language, which fuses neologisms, slang jargon and transgressive humor creates a painfully labored illusion of spontaneity and fluency, a zeitgeist that reflects the multicultural menagerie of the New Jersey suburbs and the immigrant experience in a foreign land, which fosters without recognizing newcomers and alienates them from their native countries. Immigrants straddle two worlds, belong to none and are beset by both.Written in English yet built upon underlying Spanish diction, Díazs prose in itself proves that no language, no culture, no race is ever pure and that people all over the world exist transversally above the artifice of draconian purity. The creative process of writing is presented as the ultimate expression to define Oscars forthright intertextuality where books, fictional characters and writers give reason to his otherwise miserable existence.Told in the first person narrative by Yunior*, Lolas boyfriend and Díazs alter-ego, and alternating past and present, history and literature, doom and promise, the story is unfolded from different perspectives enhancing the metafictional experience while disclosing subjacent plots such as the complexity of relationships in contemporary societies, the detritus of lives spent under constant physical and psychological strain endorsed by an abusive patriarchal hierarchy and the burden of serendipitous tyranny. Life can become a curse or a blessing, Díaz whispers to the reader. Every choice has its own consequence. Human beings from everywhere will try to give answers to senseless questions through fukús, involving faceless mongooses and voodoo, believing fervently in angels and demons rather than in the theory of evolution or in identifying their lost ones reincarnated in white gulls surfing the sky waves of eternity. The wrapping might differ but the nest of mankinds ignorance is essentially the same.In the twilight of ones consciousness, where ebbing lives are bathed in lulling moonbeams and canefields cuddle broken bodies, the unconcerned hobbit of this story draws a weary smile and takes pride in having acted following the stars of love and literature in a Universe where nothing ever ends and where one can always open a new book and find a new beginning. Nothing more exhilarating (he wrote) than saving yourself by the simple act of waking. (201) -------------------(*) My frustration with Yuniors selfish attitude with Lola, his debasing use of totos and his failure at being a true friend to Oscar accounts for the lacking star.