The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

• Title: The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao
• Author: Junot Diaz
• Received from my wife's brother
• Started: 3/6/10
• Finished: 3/9/10

My next book was to be Conan Doyle's "The Sign Of Four" as published in the wonderful New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. In fact I was more than half way through that story when we decided to head to our beach condo in Ocean City, MD. I can't say enough good things about The New Annotated Sherlock, but the one downside is the size of the book. It's huge, not great for reading on the beach or while soaking in a tub. So knowing I was heading to the beach I grabbed the next paperback on my agenda which is the subject of today's post.

This one surprised me, I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Hard to describe, kind of a coming of age story for a Dominican Republic/American fat kid. But it's a lot more than that, the story is as much about Oscar's family (and the narrator, a family friend) as it is about Oscar. I'd just butcher the story trying to explain it, but I'm sure glad I read it. I wish I could come up with a better description of the story, suffice it to say I had a hard time putting this one down each time I picked it up.