Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Six top books with overweight protagonists

Jami Attenberg's new novel is The Middlesteins.

Jonathan Franzen (author of Freedom) says: “The Middlesteins had me from its very first pages, but it wasn’t until its final pages that I fully appreciated the range of Attenberg’s sympathy and the artistry of her storytelling.”

At The Week magazine Attenberg named her six favorite books with overweight protagonists.  One title on the list:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

This novel rocked me when it came out. Oscar is an overweight Dominican kid from Paterson, N.J., who is obsessed with comic books and science fiction. Though he lives a life of the mind initially, he ends up leading an epic adventure. This book is about being a hero.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao also appears among Brooke Hauser's six top books about immigrants, Sara Gruen's six favorite books, Paste magazine's list of the ten best debut novels of the decade (2000-2009), and The Millions' best books of fiction of the millenium. The novel is one of Matthew Kaminski's five favorite novels about immigrants in America and is a book that made a difference to Zoë Saldana.

The Page 99 Test: Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

--Marshal Zeringue