"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao:" A Literary Trifecta

In "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," Junot Diaz artfully weaves three distinct narrative threads into a prize-winning novel that offers three books for the price of one.

The novel's main character, a massively overweight, nerdy Dominican American whose romantic passion for women is simultaneously humorous and heartbreaking, is one of the most original characters to appear in fiction in recent years. The reader first meets Oscar at the tender (and relatively thin) age of seven. Oscar's prepubescent love life is blossoming; he's romancing two girls at once, and his reputation as a schoolyard Romeo has spread throughout the Dominican barrio of his New Jersey town. His bliss is cut short, however, when the girls refuse to share his affection and force him to choose between them. The victor promptly dumps him for another suitor, and Oscar's love life begins a downward spiral that will persist into a dateless and despondent adulthood.

Depression prompts Oscar to overeat and lose himself in comic books, fantasy novels, and marathon rounds of Dungeons and Dragons. Despite the repeated efforts of his sister Lola and his best friend Yunior to educate Oscar about the proper way to seduce the opposite sex, he stubbornly persists with obsessive personal habits and un-hip hobbies that guarantee his lovelorn isolation. College finds Oscar holed up in his dorm room, chubbier than ever, writing what he hopes will be the next "Lord of the Rings" and fantasizing about his latest crush. Readers will find themselves fuming at Oscar's hapless inertia while also hoping that something wonderful will finally fall his way. What can life offer a bounteously romantic soul wrapped in an unappealing body? What should it offer? What do we owe to ourselves and others regarding such issues? These deep questions, together with Diaz's skillful and original development of Oscar's character, could carry the book without the aid of any additional material.

Nevertheless, "Oscar Wao" offers the reader a second story line that is equally engaging. Many readers may find Diaz's exposition of the complex relationship between Oscar's mother, Beli, and his sister, Lola, to be the most gripping element of the book. Beli's violent verbal and physical attacks on her own daughter are maddeningly inexplicable until Diaz gradually informs the reader about Beli's past life in Dominica, a tragic tale that could fill a book of its own. Beli and her daughter are oil and water in some respects (Beli's romantic entanglements have bordered on the fatally obsessive, while Lola's approach to "love" is about as cool and calculating as it gets), but it is their wild tenacity of spirit that locks them into combat; each despises the other for a stubborn ferocity that she refuses to recognize in herself. Diaz explores this mother/daughter relationship expertly, guiding the reader through Beli and Lola's tangled web of love, fear, resentment, and hope with a story that could stand alone on its own merits.

That being said, Diaz offers the reader yet a third narrative lens through which to enjoy the book. "Oscar Wao" offers an expansive, multi-generational history of the Dominican Republic in general and an account of the diabolical 30-year reign of President/dictator Rafael Trujillo Molina in particular. From the time Trujillo rose to power in 1930 until he was assassinated in 1961, he ruled the country with a ruthless cruelty that was feared throughout the Caribbean. Oscar and his family are fictional characters, but Trujillo was real, and Diaz doesn't pull any punches as he depicts the ruinous effects of Trujillo's rule upon the Dominican people. Trujillo's tentacles reach out to adversely affect every member of Oscar's family, touching everyone from Oscar's scholarly Grandfather Abelard to Oscar himself, who finds himself in a deadly confrontation with Trujillo's legacy long after the man himself is dead.

This book, a well-deserving winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is an excellent choice for your to-read list in 2009, whether you're interested in exploring Dominican history, mother/daughter relationships, or the imaginative, love-addled brain of a Star Wars fan named Oscar.