The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

This book is a post-modern family epic couched in Dominican culture, history, and folklore. It follows the sad life of an overweight sic-fi nerd's struggle with cultural/stereotypical machismo expectations (being a Dominican man) and his inability to be with any women due to aforementioned weight/overt neediness, and how this somehow delegitimizes him as a human. Díaz employs a super interesting narrative style that includes footnotes explaining the Dominican dictatorship of the 20th century via footnotes, interjections sci-fi and pop culture references, and playful Spanglish.

Overall I liked it and it was like nothing I've read before, but I had a hard time getting really absorbed in it.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started this book, but it definitely wasn't what I got. At first, I was really confused with all of the jumping around with narrations, and bouncing between generations. I didn't think that the connections were explained as well as they could have been. I also didn't like the way the male narrator described Oscar. It seems that almost every comment featured something negative about Oscar's weight, nerdiness, or desperation to find a girlfriend.

if I remember correctly, the only reason that Junior even moves in with Oscar is that he feels bad for him, and wants to get good with Lola

I don't know really anything about the history of the Dominican Republic, but I feel that a lot of the things discussed about Trujillo were unnecessary.

I think I could have done without reading this book, but it's definitely not the worst one I've read this year.