Part One of "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"

Diaz's novel is very innovative. I have never read a novel with such a format, it provides multiple narrators, thus different points of view. The story is good but I also think a big reason he won the Pulitzer Prize is because of his innovation. There is no other novel like it. This would have to be a big strength. Despite the multiple narrators, it is unclear in the first part is exactly who is narrating. It takes away from the story because Yunior is contradicted once Lola narrates. As a reader, we question what Yunior says is legitimate and actually happened. The narrators set up the story for us and give us a lot of background on the characters. With this we can foreshadow what is going to happen. Diaz does not use quotations or italicize the Spanish words which adds more authenticity to the stories being told. Some of his sentences are written differently than others. Some do not have complete subjects or predicates but it works because the reader still understands what is going on.