I tend to get my hopes up before I begin reading a book that has won an award or landed great reviews. So when I picked up The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, which comes with a laundry list of accolades, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, Times Book of the Year, New York Times Notable Book, and oh, by the way, a Pulitzer, my expectations were pretty high. I think it’s inevitable that a book can’t live up to that kind of praise, it’s almost too much to ask, and Oscar is no different. It’s a good book. In fact, it has its moments of greatness. Oscar is a terrific character and you must and will fall in love with him immediately. But Diaz doesn’t stick with Oscar as long as you want him to, and when he leaves for other territory the novel becomes less engaging and feels a bit cobbled together.
Don’t get me wrong. There are other fine characters and several story lines that will keep you interested and reading throughout. The prose is full of life and energy and surprises. But the story drags to varying degrees throughout the middle, even as Oscar tries to hold it together. Poor, gigantic Oscar, who cannot find love, although his heart aches endlessly for it. Poor, fat Oscar, a Dominican living among people who value sex and being sexy above life itself and he has never even been kissed let alone laid. Some people find living life far more difficult than leaving it behind, and that, in essence, is Oscar. As the book closes in on its climax, and as Oscar’s life of shame and pain closes in on him, here is where we find our sad hero:
“On the outside, Oscar simply looked tired, no taller, no fatter, only the skin under his eyes, pouched from years of quiet desperation, had changed. Inside, he was in a world of hurt. He saw black flashes before his eyes. He saw himself falling through the air. He knew what he was turning into. He was turning into the worst kind of human on the planet: and old bitter dork.”
Oscar is the heart of the novel and it is a tribute to Diaz, certainly, that Oscar’s long absences are felt so acutely by the reader. All of the high praise that dozens of critics have handed out are true. A vibrant narrative. A voice that is (as the NY Times describes it) “profane, lyrical, learned and tireless, a riot of accents and idioms coexisting within a single personality.” It’s Santo Domingo and Upper Manhattan and melodrama and a cultural explosion all at once, and the science fiction and fantasy references liberally tossed about are a delight. But it’s also a bit too scatter-shot and frustrating at just the wrong moments and for too long. Some of the characters are not all that fascinating. Even so, for its sheer power and inventiveness and wondrous, wondrous Oscar: Recommended.
