The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Diaz

I ordered The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (which won a Pulitzer in 09) last fall after hearing an interview with the author on NPR. When I got the book and realized it contained things like footnotes (a lot of them), I decided it was far too deep for my sleep-deprived mommy to a newborn brain. I set the book aside until I was looking for something to read this past Christmas break.

I love the voice of this book, which is about a fat, nerdy Dominican boy living in New Jersey. There are a lot of Dominican Spanish phrases sprinkled liberally throughout the book, which I think kept me from getting everything out of the book. (I know, I could have looked them up...but that was too much work for me.) Even so, the book is both touching and funny, and I learned quite a bit about the history of the Dominican Republic.