The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Oscar is a nerdy, overweight Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey, obsessed with science fiction, fantasy role playing games, and falling in love.. Narrated from both the perspective of Yunior, Oscar's college roommate, and Lolo, Oscar's sister, the story also follows her life, and the earlier lives of their mother and grandfather during the "Trujillo Era" in the Dominican Republic.

Oscar is "not one of those Dominican cats everybody's always going on about - he wasn't no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy" with a million hot girls lined up. He is the complete opposite - lacking social skills, having no real friends, and most importantly to him, no imminent prospect of ever getting laid; instead, Oscar tries to forget his misery by focusing on his writing, dreaming about becoming "the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien."

Full of science fiction and fantasy references, anime and comic book analogies, footnotes on Dominican history, and written with a good dose of urban slang and Spanglish mixed in, this Pulitzer Prize winning novel made for an interesting read. It's street, yet intelligent; geeky, yet endearing; funny, yet heartbreaking..