I had never heard of Junot Diaz before listening to this book. One day when I was driving home from work I heard him interviewed on NPR and read part of the book. I was so piqued by the character of Oscar Wao - named so because his classmates teased him about being a Dominican Oscar Wilde - that I wanted to read it immediately. I found myself intermittently pausing the story, going to Wikipedia and looking up many of the real life characters and places mentioned in the story. I am sure Diaz, as a MIT professor, would be very pleased that some learning happened along with my enjoyment of his novel. Before reading this book all I could tell you about the Dominican Republic was that I knew it was on an island that was half Dominican Republic and half Haiti. The two actor/narrators of the book, Jonathan David and Staci Snell did a wonderful job - I think that this is a book that really lends itself to the audio experience. The book tells the story of multiple generations of Oscar's family and some his friends, in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, and New Jersey and Diaz does an amazing job of pulling all these people and places together.
3 comments:
Sounds good. A new release I take it? My craptacular library probably doesn't have it.
A fellow NPR listener. Yay. I heard an hour of CBC the other day. OK, we do have an accent.
I was listening to this on NPR the other day, too. I'm curious about it.
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