"Oscar Wao" novel: What makes it Pulitzer Prize material

I often try to read award-winning novels. One reason is that they're usually good and it raises my reading standards to read a well-done work. Let's face it: after you've read hundreds and hundreds of books, they all start to sound sort of similar. Books that win awards, then, are usually quite unusual, if only for the fact that book award committees are looking for original and innovative work.

I also read this book's from a writer's perspective: what was this writer thinking when he wrote this way? Did it take him years to craft it this way? How many revisions? Is the book ultimately a success to me? Can I learn something from it?

With all this rolling around in my mind, I approached the 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz with excitement and trepidation. I thought I might be able to emphasize with the main character because he loves to write and is somewhat of a social outcast. (So was I at one point, I admit.)

The book stands out for many reasons: you learn a lot about Santo Domingo, its people and the immigrants from that land who live in the US. It's quite a boisterous and different society. There were a lot of conversations in Spanish and I didn't understand them. They could have made it a little easier to understand what was going on.

The book uses many different narrators, which was sort of a disappointment, but maybe that's what the prize committee was looking for. It just made it difficult to figure out who was speaking at which point, but you do eventually discover.

So, for two things, this book was reading WORK. Also, there are quite a few annotations in the book that show up at the bottom of the page so that readers can understand the politics and society of the 1950s and 1960s. I don't think I have ever seen annotations in a fiction book before! They distracted from reading the text through full shot at once, but they also added to reading because the author gives a very good description, often funny, often tragic, of life under a dictatorship.

To sum up, yes, I can see why it won the Pulitizer. The characters are original -- they're either heartwarming or horrendous. The Spanish words, the many narrators, and the many notations also contribute the feeling that this book is something special, is unique. It probably took a long time for the author to write. I feel glad I read it. On to the next one!