This is a 3.5 star rating. 
 First off, this is a book that has to be read its physical form. I'd tried to read it at least four times before on my Kindle, but couldn't stand flipping through the footnotes (and the footnotes are worth reading, all of them). I have complex feelings toward this book, confirmed by an exchange I had with a co-worker this summer. Neither of us are fans of the fact that the book focuses so much on Oscar's heterosexuality and his drive to prove his masculinity through the conquest of the females in his life. Oscar himself definitely suffers from Nice-Guy Syndrome (see: his utter, apoplectic rage when he finds one of his many crushes daring to hook up with someone else), and the fact that the entire novel loosely pivots around the arc of his life is weird to me - because throughout the book, Diaz writes about a multitude of much more interesting female characters: Oscar's mom Beli and his sister Lola, namely, but even characters like La Inca are fantastic. 
 But it always comes back to Oscar. Why? As characters go, he's whiny, passive, passive-aggressive, and pretty much a disappointment in this otherwise stellar book. Is it because Diaz needed Oscar to bring in the nerdspeak that peppers the novel? Diaz is gifted, no doubt, and at certain points, I had to stop and sigh to myself and put the book down to turn a phrase over and over in my head. I worked my way through without translating most of the Spanish phrases because they were obvious in context, and wove some uncomprehending enchantment over me. But I think Diaz is mistaken if he believes he needed Oscar "ghetto-nerd" Wao to weave together the ghetto and the nerd - a fact that I think Diaz himself may have realized by the end, because the final event hinted at from the very title of the novel comes and goes with oh-so-little fanfare, much more a whimper than a bang. 
 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is not a must-read. Half the time, I found myself incredibly frustrated with Oscar's Superbad-esque whining, his terrible preoccupation with virginity, the comparisons of Oscar's virginful life in Paterson, New Jersey to his mother's heartbreakingly awful life (don't give me any crap about her shallowness; (view spoiler)[girl got a baby beat out of her (hide spoiler)]) in the DR, and how both were examples of their family's fuku (curse). Like no, really, one is worse than the other, trust me. Half the time, I was ready to pitch the book across the room and just go read something else. Luckily, Oscar barely takes center stage in his own novel - as in his life, he spends his time outshone by all the other characters. (Was that the whole point - was that what Diaz was trying to do? Unclear; may be giving him too much credit.) At any rate, something compelled me to finish. I think I'm glad I did.