I loved this book. I've had my eye on it ever since it came out- which was at least two or three years ago now but have only just gotten around to reading it and it was more than worth the wait. The story of Oscar, a shy, overweight Dominican nerd growing up in New York City, it explores the struggles of Oscar's youth and how his disastrous bad luck and inability to fit in with the culture of machismo around him might be due to a curse (or, as the Dominicans call it, 'fuku') that has haunted his family for generations and followed them straight from the Dominican Republic, to America and back again.
As a character, I identified with Oscar immediately: his love of books, writing and all things science fiction, fantasy and geek/nerd related can be something of a cross to bear, especially growing up. (My own personal fortunes took a turn for the better when I landed in a school big enough to find a corner to hide in with people not to dissimilar to me. I found my tribe, more or less.) And the pain and torment that Oscar suffers through, his growing struggles with weight, his inability to talk to women, are all conveyed through dialogue (the book is told from the point of view of narrator) that practically dances off of the tongue and is peppered with every science fiction/fantasty/geek and nerd reference you can think of.
Where the book really takes off is when the author, Junot Diaz begins to explore the origins of the curse that has tormented Oscar's family for so long. (Mild tangent: before reading this book- as well as Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of The Goat what I knew about the Dominican Republic apart from it's geographic location and Sammy Sosa being from there could have been inscribed on the head of a pin. I now feel comparatively more educated- especially to the tormented history of that country under the dictatorship of Trujillo- and it's a sad, pathetic reflection of the educational system in this country that I had to glean such knowledge from two very different but both excellent novels.)
Oscar eventually goes to college at Rutgers (and reading so much about Rutgers gave me a jolt: that University on the banks of the Raritan will be one of our new B1G confreres, next year- so that was kind of cool- a fresh perspective on Rutgers other than their psychotic ex-men's basketball coach.) He ends up rooming with one of Lola's on-again-off-again boyfriends, Yunior, who keeps an eye on him while Lola, his sister is studying abroad in Spain. (It's somewhat cloudy to me whether she actually does or not- she might have told people that while she was in the Dominican Republic- but either way, the ambiguity neither bothered me or hurts the narrative in anyway. Intriguingly, when the narrative focuses more on Oscar, Lola seems like the sibling with her shit together- always involved at college, having big dreams, etc etc. When the narrative shifts to Lola's point of view, it's revealed that she has just as many runs of bad luck and foolish dreams as everyone else- she runs off with a boy and in the end gets caught, packed up and sent to the Dominican Republic to see the error of her ways.) Despite the best efforts of Yunior, Oscar never really seems to find his footing with the ladies and after a particularly cruel heartbreak, attempts suicide by leaping off of a railroad bridge.
So both Oscar and Lola wind up their homeland and learn to true nature of the curse that has haunted their family- a truth tied intimately to the dark and bloody history of the Dominican Republic's past and just when the reader is left wondering if Oscar will find love at all, he falls hard for a neighbor of his abuela but the cost of finding love might be very high indeed, thanks to the family curse.
Overall: This is a book that I really could have finished in one sitting, if I would have had the time. The dialogue pops and is scattered with Dominican slang and a nice Spanglish patois that added to the authenticity of the narrative and you would need some kind of a flowchart to keep track of every sci-fi reference made in this book (and, awesomely so, in my opinion.) Oscar is a character you want to root for and even at the end of the book, when you're left feeling dispirited and somewhat disheartened by the ending (minor spoiler alert: it's not exactly a shiny, happy ending) there's a coda that makes you smile. Fun, happy, dark, horrifying, melancholy, joyful all at once, this was an amazing book that I would happily read over and over again. **** out of ****.
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