Detailed plot synopsis reviews of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao |
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Ybon won't let Oscar bone her but engages in cockteases, like letting Oscar see her naked in bed.
Meanwhile an important Captain in Trujillo's armed forces considers Ybon his girlfriend and is unhappy to see Oscar hanging around her. Can you guess what happens next?
The Captain's men take Oscar to the same cane field that her mother was taken to and beat the crap out of him, breaking bones.
For his own safety La Inca has Oscar sent back to America. But Oscar is so in love with Ybon that he comes back to the Dominican Republic to be with her. The Captain's men take Oscar back to the cane field and execute him.
In a postscript we learn that before Oscar was killed, Ybon let him bone her once, and Oscar enjoyed it very much, writing Yunior a letter describing how great the sex was.
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Literary Criticism:
From the title of this book, you'd think this is the story of some guy named Oscar. Well, it isn't. The title of the book is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but really should have been called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, his Sister, his Mother, and his Grandpa. I was expecting a book about Oscar, and was surprised to find that much of the book wasn't even about him. His life wasn't wondrous either. And the author's habit of writing about different characters in different chapters without telling us who he is writing about is very irritating.
The main theme of the book is that Oscar's family is cursed. The entire book shows bad things happening to his family to justify the claim that his family is cursed.
The only problem with this thesis is that curses are imaginary. They are not real. And without this theme to hold the story together, the story becomes nothing--the story of the suffering of several people, which have no real connection to each other. In short, the story is an incoherent mess.
I found it totally unbelievable that Oscar would be willing to die to have sex with his prostitute girlfriend. I understand he had never boned a woman before, but still, that is not something to die for. He acted very unrealistically, even for a man in his situation, so his death felt very manipulated by the author to produce a sad ending for a story that never felt authentic to begin with.
The only part of the story that did feel authentic was the story of Oscar the loner, who, unable to get girls, retreated into a world of science fiction and novel writing and dungeons and dragons. That felt real because that's the kind of lives some people lead. But instead of taking that and writing a believable story, the author chose to portray Oscar as an obsessed maniac who would die for a few brief moments of boning a chick. The story of the other relatives suffering didn't add anything in particular, it just felt like the author wanted to write a story with a lot of suffering, but not a lot of meaning.
We see the same storyline repeating over and over. Character A has sex with the wrong person and B and C beat him up. It gets repetitive quickly. This book was neither coherent nor creative.
