2 Sentence Review: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is a Pulitzer Prize winning book that teaches you as much about Dominican history and the human condition as it does comic books and funny Spanish swear words.
Meant especially for anyone who gravitates towards the rhythms of spoken word or who likes there to be so little aesthetic distance between reader and character that you can smell the narrator’s body odor.
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Truth be told, I really wanted to like this book. I read it at a bad time in my life. It was 2 days before I had to finish 50 books and I still had 3 to go.*
I needed books that were fast, less intense, and where I stayed a sanitary distance away from any character’s body odors.
I didn’t want books that I could devour. I wanted softballs, novellas, straightforward prose, or vampire crap. (Hey, 50 books = 50 books. Enough said.)
I definitely want to go back and try to read this again now that I’m in a less frantic state of mind. Everyone I know loves it and I rely a lot on tips from friends. Thanks, Lonnie!
*My goal in 2008 was to read 50 books that year.