mothlight reviewed The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Review of 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I really wanted to like this more. I enjoyed the style, the references, the mix of languages. But the abrupt shifts in narrative were frustrating. I was enjoying Oscar and Lola's stories but then it shifted to the mother's back story in DR and things seemed to grind to a halt for a long time. It was perhaps the footnotes on the history that kept me going through that.
The ending. There was a moment forwards the end where the narrator questioned his narrative choices and perhaps the reality of Oscar's character that seemed to break the rest of the book. The spell, the acceptance of the narrative was punctured, removing you from the story, leaving you to question why Oscar ended up in this improbable situation, and the book never really recovered from this. And as a brief life, the ending was perhaps justified (especially given the nature of life in the DR) but just didn't work. After the narrative had broken down, there didn't seem to be anywhere to go but to just end it.