The book is a collection of stories of a Dominican family across three generations. The story about Abelard (1944–1946), the grandfather, the first generation, is mostly about the nasty rule of Rafael Trujillo and it's impact on our lead family at the end of which the daughter is orphaned and lost.
The second generation story is about the daughter, Hypatía Belicia Cabral, who is later on discovered and rescued from a very horrible life by her immediate surviving relative, La Inca, a cousin of her father. This part is more about Hypatía's need for being loved and her affair with a gangster who already is married to Rafael Trujillo's sister. This part too ends in tragedy and Hypatia emigrates to Paterson, New Jersey.
The third generation story is about the life of Hypatia's son Oscar de León, and daughter Lolla as they live in Paterson, New Jersey. Hypatia was deserted by their father and she works all sorts of jobs to keep the family going.. Oscar is obese and is obsessed with science fiction, cartoons, reading, and role-playing games. His one goal is to write a science fiction epic. But the real problem with him is that he is unable to enter into a relationship with a girl, any girl. His elder sister Lolla wants to run away and her relationship with her mother, who is dying of cancer, gets deteriorated till she actually runs away.
Junot Diaz starts with the third generation and then takes one backwards and forwards using all sort of american english and spanish and slang.
Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008 and National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2007, the book is definitely a must read. It's a well researched and well documented book as it took full seven years for Junot Diaz to write this book. In a scale of 10 we give it a 9.5.
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