The mother had been born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, but immigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. We meet dorky Oscar as a high school sophomore living in Paterson, N.J., with his mother, Belicia his sister, Lola and his heroin-addicted uncle, who plays a minor, insignificant role. The book begins with short-lived promise. Unfortunately, the library's sole copy has been checked out for weeks, so I didn't get to read "Drown" before experiencing "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," which happens to be one of the most erratic, ill-conceived and annoying books I've ever encountered. I've been meaning to read it for some time, and when I learned he was coming out with a novel, I figured the timing was perfect: I'd sample his lone collection of short stories, get a flavor for his style, and then progress to the novel. That, in short, is what Junot Diaz has done with "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (Riverhead Books, $24.95) - a short story he wrote for the New Yorker in 2000, and which, in novel form, devotes more pages to the title character's extended family (and it's so-called curse or fuku) than it does to the fat, girl-challenged nerdy writer who loves “ The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and aspires to be the Dominican Tolkien.ĭiaz, now 38, burst on the literary scene in 1996 with his well-received collection of short stories, "Drown," which critics and readers both loved.
Imagine if, before Macomber is "accidentally" shot by his wife on that safari, Hemingway decided to pad the narrative with a couple hundred pages about Macomber's mother, sister, and grandfather - tangents that only serve to betray the proper focus of the story, its title, and the reader's trust. Imagine, if you will, that seven years after publishing "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," Ernest Hemingway decided to expand his well-known short story into a 350-page novel. Review of Junot Diaz’s first novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” published Oct. If someone says they read this and liked it, punch them in the throat. Here's the review I wrote when it came out. How this book won the Pulitzer Prize AND the National Book Critics Circle is beyond me.
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