Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Giving Up on a Book Is a Good Thing

I made it to the third chapter (23 percent on the kindle) in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and that was enough for me. I liked the first chapter and thought the whole book would be about Oscar and his struggles to figure out his life with a series of confusing binaries such as:

Spanish vs English
Dominican vs American
nerd vs wanting to be cool
superstition vs rationality

But the second chapter, instead, switched to relling the story of Oscar's sister, which was not as enjoyable as the first chapter to me, but still solid. The third chapter switched to the story of Oscar's mother and I was rapidly losing interest last night when I began that chaper. There is also something misogynistic about the female characters I could not quite figure out just what the author thought about women -- are they more than objects of sexual desire -- which bothered me at some level of consciousness. So, this morning, I decided to move on to something else. So many good books to read, why should I read something that I do not find satisfying.

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