The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

So right now I'm about half-way through The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  It's brilliant! It's the story of this Dominican boy living in New Jersey, his mother and his sister.  The narrator is a friend of Oscar's sister who apparently (remember I'm only half-way through the book) has collected the family stories from Oscar's sister and grandmother.  Oscar is a fat kid, and a sci-fi/fantasy geek.  He's desperately lonely but also fiercely determined to remain himself.  He won't diet, exercise or stop speaking like an SAT prep book no matter how many times he falls in love with a beautiful girl out of his league.  The best part is that the narrator knows a fair amount of the fantasy canon as well, so there are lots of obscure references to Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who and others.

I've gotten to the point in the story where it talks about Oscar's Mom's life in Santo Domingo before she came to the States.  That part is incredibly sad.  No spoilers.

The most interesting thing for me, reading this book, is that I find myself imagining what it would be like to be Oscar's friend, and to try and help him with his problems.  I think I would do a better job than his sort-of friend Yunior, who tries to make Oscar change, when what Oscar really needs is acceptance.  I do that all the time with books: see the problem and fantasize how I could be dropped into the story to solve it.  I would start by telling Oscar to imagine that he is really an elf who has been changed into a mortal by an evil mage and that in the process of transmutating him, the evil mage also stole his memory.  The only way to return to his true form is to stop ingesting the chemicals in human food (which is poisonous to elves and further robs him of his magic) and start eating natural food like vegetables, either steamed or fried in olive oil.  He needs to swim (not run the way Yunior tries to make him run) and when he is ready he should 'relearn' how to ride a horse.  He needs to fence too, and not just with his wooden samurai sword, but with a saber in a fencing class.  Also, he needs to learn to dance.

Of course I know that things aren't going to work out for poor Oscar, but it's a really good story anyway.  Now, if I could just find someone to translate all of the Spanish mixed in to the narrative...

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