Wow! Needed the extra day to recover from reading this book. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, with the following honors:
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2008
- National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction 2007
- New York Times Notable Books for Fiction and Poetry 2007
- Library Journal Best Books 2007
among others, is one of the most graphic books I've read in some time. But with so much acclaim, I continued reading past the first 30 pages and I'm glad I did.
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According to Contemporary Authors Online, author, Junot Diaz was born in 1968, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He immigrated to the United States around 1975 and became a naturalized citizen. He received his B.A. in Literature and History at Rutgers University and his Creative Writing M.F.A. at Cornell University. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is his first novel, following his collection of short stories entitled Drown (1996).
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On April 28 of this year Newsweek published an article in which Mr. Diaz reveals that a book he hopes parents will read to their kids is Richard Adams's Watership Down, "which is about the very thing kids dream of: that something small can still be a hero." Does this remind you of The Brief Wondrous Life...?
1 comments:
When I read his point about "something small can still be a hero," it immediately clicked with the theme of the book for me. Doesn't Oscar, the nerd, society's "loser," end up being a hero by loving someone society might think unlovable? Isn't that his whole goal in his falling in love over and over again, to be someone's hero?
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