This is one of those books that while I didn't necessarily like the story itself, I can appreciate how the author wrote and structured it.  Personally, I am very annoyed by footnotes because they interrupt the flow of the story and lead me off on a tangent and then I have to find my way back and remember what was going on before this whole journey began.  This book is FULL of footnotes at the beginning and that just spoiled my attitude for the whole thing.  Once I passed the halfway mark, things were beginning to look up because the use of footnotes went down and the story started to bring itself together.  The characters themselves are very interesting and it'll probably help you to know that it's not narrated by the author or Oscar; most of the time, it's narrated by another character, Yunior (think Great Gatsby).  I didn't realize that until it was explicitly said around 1/3rd of the way through and that would have helped me understand what was happening so much better.  The last thing I want to mention is the history.  Some of this story takes place in the Dominican Republic and the author includes some history as well as some Spanglish.  I don't really know a whole lot about the DR except for the fact that they're on the same island as Haiti and they speak Spanish there (and I got to practice my Spanish by reading this book so that was cool!).  I found the whole history timeline to be really cool.  It's definitely good if you have a basic background knowledge of the DR but Diaz fills you in on the more specific stuff.