This was neither brief nor wondrous. Truly truly truly I do not give a single fuck if Oscar got laid or not, and yet every time we had to hear about him it was about how he was too fat, nerdy, and ugly to get laid. Womp fucking womp. Oscar is presented as the antithesis of Yunior/Dominican hypermasculinity, and sure on the surface it seems that way - they are physical opposites, and whereas Yunior very easily sleeps around, Oscar can't even talk to a girl; but if you look at Oscar's behavior more deeply, I'd say I disagree. His inability to get a girlfriend doesn't automatically mean he possesses any sort of respectfulness towards women. He still has the inability to leave women alone, is practically a stalker, and in one instance he even gets violent and resorts to misogynistic derogatory names when he catches the girl he likes sleeping with someone. 

This goes along with how much I disliked the level of misogyny in the book. Yeah I understand the narrative of a story doesn't equate to the stance of the author, but I've never seen a book quite as crude as this one, where every female character is regularly described by their ass, tits, and how fuckable they are. Intended or not, I don't believe this book offers any valid criticisms on violent misogyny because the criticisms of machismo itself was weak. Describing bad things that happen to women isn't anything new and doesn't automatically mean criticism. I honestly felt that this story had a very hateful display towards women and I'm not surprised by what I saw after searching up the author. 

The last thing I'll say is that I also found the magical realism in the story to be lacking. I kept hearing about fukú, but I wasn't seeing it. It seemed a rather weak, and unnecessary, explanation for all the tragedies happening to Oscar's family when living under the rule of a dictator is explanation enough. 

 And now I can yeet this book out of my life and preferably into the trash where it belongs *yeets*
I guess I should write a comprehensive review as to why I did not like this book, and boy is there a lot! First of all, we're introduced to Oscar, who is so obsessed with love and wanting to get laid as he grows up. We follow him through his childhood, teens, and young adulthood in brief snippets. And every single time the reader is with him, Oscar is whining about how none of the girls want to date him because of xyz and how he will die a virgin. He does not stop complaining at all, even to the point of obsessing about other girls or women to stalker levels. The remarks in regards to domestic violence and the abuse some of these young girls go through sickened me. Oscar's remarks towards 11 year old Maritza and her dating men 2x to 3x her age and getting beaten and abused by them was "I guess she just likes men who do that since those are all the guys she seems to date." I started out annotating my book but stopped around 30 pages in when all my annotations became "WTF?!" Oscar's obsession continues on, but the moments of relief from his obnoxious views on the world were then replaced with different family members and their unrelenting trauma. From his sister's trauma, to his mom's, to his grandfather's, never ending trauma was brought up that made me sick to my stomach, especially a particularly gruesome scene that seriously needed a trigger warning for the beating and gang rape of a pregnant teen who was left for dead in the fields (she survives thankfully, but at a price). This book just made me depressed, apathetic, and sick to my stomach. I get that the author wanted to show the horrors that the people of the Dominican Republic faced with Trujillo as the dictator, but as someone who has already dealt with enough trauma of my own with domestic violence, sexual assault, and all forms of abuse, this was triggering and kept pushing me into a darker mindset. I finally had to skim read when I reached the 50% mark and the book was STILL GOING ON but back in Oscar and Yunior's heads. Their toxic masculinity is what did me in. I finished it, but at the price of my sanity this week. I will be tossing this book out of my collection and I don't think I'll pick up another one of this author's works since some of the other books he's written deal with a few of these same characters I hate.