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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Dear ocean vuong thankyou for sonny, thank you for his sanguine personality I will carry his character with me for a while and thank you for Grazina,Wayne,BJ,Russia, Maureen,and mostly thankyou for Hai whom i spent an extra 30 minutes crying over in the bathroom because i couldn't breakdown in public and having people ask me what is wrong only for me to say I'm crying over a boy's heartache and his friends
This was such a beautiful story about grief and friendship and identity I felt every so deeply
This is one of those books that you read and know the story will stay with you for the remainder of your days
This was such a beautiful story about grief and friendship and identity I felt every so deeply
This is one of those books that you read and know the story will stay with you for the remainder of your days
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug abuse
Minor: Death
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Oh no. I kinda hate it. At its best this book is absolutely brilliant (the scene in the slaughterhouse, my god ). Where this book falls short imo is in it's characters and giving relevance to the episodes is is describing. Nothing that happens has real consequences, both for the characters and the plot, apart from the occasional callback. Vuong spends so much time in creating this complex mother-son dynamic, but ends up doing nothing with it. This may work in a shorter book, but at 550 pages (german edition) this is insufficient for me. The characters feel crafted, like shells specifically made to serve a certain purpose. As soon as I understood their "purpose", the dynamic between them became annoyingly predictable and inhuman, which then lead to me not really caring about them, although the book constantly reminding me that I definetly should. Again, some scenes are nothing short but brilliant, but as a whole this book felt frustratingly shallow, hollow, nihilistic and inconsistent.
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ocean's work is such a gift. I had the privilege of attending a launch event for this book and something he said will stick with me for a long time. In describing the inspiration behind Home Market at the characters who inhabit it, he said: "Boston Market is a sonnet." So much of what is really brilliant about this book is the quiet poetry of this type of service, the people who come day in, day out, who create an incredibly unique bond both in the monotony and the relentlessness of the work. These are workers that are so often marginalized and overlooked, but are fixtures of many towns like East Gladness. They are inextricable from that fabric and motion of those towns, and each have their own private battles. I think those scenes, those bonds, are where this novel is the strongest and most unique, and I love that it gives them a voice.
Something else Vuong said in the same conversation that in media and in his own work, he is often wants to see "transformation without change." That feels like a very apt descriptor for this novel, where there is dramatic transformation — most notably within Hai — when it may appear that from the outside, he is still in the same place he was. You can really feel how much of his own experience Vuong has imbued into Hai's relationship with Grazina (which he has described in interviews about her real-life counterpart) and how those brief flashes of life can irrevocably transform us, even if our station in life hasn't changed.
This novel has all the startlingly poetic descriptions of the mundane that I've come to love about Vuong's work. It's slowly placed, and while I didn't tear through it with quite as much gusto as I expected given how excited I was to read it, this may be a novel best savored slowly.
Something else Vuong said in the same conversation that in media and in his own work, he is often wants to see "transformation without change." That feels like a very apt descriptor for this novel, where there is dramatic transformation — most notably within Hai — when it may appear that from the outside, he is still in the same place he was. You can really feel how much of his own experience Vuong has imbued into Hai's relationship with Grazina (which he has described in interviews about her real-life counterpart) and how those brief flashes of life can irrevocably transform us, even if our station in life hasn't changed.
This novel has all the startlingly poetic descriptions of the mundane that I've come to love about Vuong's work. It's slowly placed, and while I didn't tear through it with quite as much gusto as I expected given how excited I was to read it, this may be a novel best savored slowly.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Dementia
Moderate: Xenophobia, Suicide attempt, Abandonment
Minor: Forced institutionalization, Death of parent