The Power of O

No, I’m not talking about that O, but when I think of my favorite things, the election of Barack Obama will forever be at the very top of the list. But here, I’m talking about Oscar Wao, who lives in a space set aside for strange, quirky, and unforgettable characters like Oskar Schell and Owen Meany.

Yet while Oscar Wao certainly qualifies as a quirky character, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a lot more than an Oscar character study. Many of the other characters, including Lola, Oscar’s sister; Yunior, his sometimes buddy and Lola’s sometimes boyfriend; and Oscar’s mother and aunt are equally interesting. Moreover the story is all told against the backdrop of the brutal Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. So there’s a lot going on and the book delivers quite a punch.

I had a lot of trouble, however, with the frequent use of untranslated Spanish, Spanglish, and Dominican dialect (if that’s what it was) words. It just drove me crazy to not understand what people were saying to each other. Some people in my book club didn’t find this annoying at all and felt that they could understand the general gist of what was being said. But I wanted to know what all those words meant. Since the book does have footnotes that provide historical background, why not a glossary, or footnoted translations? Even with this annoyance, it’s a great book.