Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

213 reviews

casserole_cg's review against another edition

i wanted to love this so badly but it’s just not for me 😔 the writing is gorgeous though and i can acknowledge the depth of skill in these pages. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism and Child abuse

Moderate: Drug use, Homophobia, and Car accident

Minor: Miscarriage

annaarbooks's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Sexual content, Violence, and War

fixesofia's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse and Drug use

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual content, Dementia, Grief, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Bullying, Cancer, Excrement, Vomit, Car accident, and Abortion

anawolken's review against another edition

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

4.0

Devastatingly beautiful, this book will break your heart while simultaneously healing it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Sexual content, and War

gabbyolsen's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Hauntingly beautiful writing

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Drug abuse, and Drug use

Moderate: Grief

Minor: Alcoholism, Bullying, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Blood, Car accident, Death of parent, Alcohol, and War

james1star's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This was truly an exceptional book with harrowing content juxtaposing beautiful, exquisite writing. Vuong being a poet meant his novel debut read this way but he’s also pinpoint in what he wants to say and doesn’t stray from the hard facts of this main character’s existence. It’s a letter from ‘Little Dog’ writing to his mother Rose who doesn’t speak or understand English so you can tell it’s all unashamedly honest. He speaks about a lot: the generational trauma of the Vietnam war on his mum and grandmother Lan, their journey getting to America, the relationship he had with them and child/domestic abuse faced at the hands of his mother, the immigrant experience, a relationship with a boy, Trevor, and in general what is like living in his Queer Vietnamese American body in contemporary USA. The boy he once loved deals with a opioid addiction brought on by taking Oxy and Vuong talks about this drug crisis in America, how it developed and the general destructive, horrible nature of drugs detailing addiction, overdoses and loss of so many young people to it - truly a heartbreaking fact. 

I don’t have any negatives to say regarding this book, it’s difficult to read for sure but every part needs to be spoken about. Vuong portrays the story amazingly and many parts will stay with me for a long time. I underlined and saved lots of quotes, some of my absolute faves/most meaningful I’ll share here but be warned of a few spoilers. 

‘The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past.’ 

And a bit later: ‘Maybe a survivor is the last one to come home, the final monarch that lands on a branch already weighted with ghosts.’ 

‘Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all—but an orphan […] to speak in our mother tongue if to speak only partially in Vietnamese, but entirely in war.’ 

‘…sometimes I don’t know what or who we are. Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was.’ 

‘Your hands are hideous—and I hate everything that made them that way. I hate how they are the wreck and reckoning of a dream. […] I hate and love your battered hands for what they can never be.’ 

‘And because I am your son, I said, “sorry.” Because I am your son, my apology had become, by then, an extension on myself. It was my hello.’ 

‘I didn’t want to use the Vietnamese word for it—pê-dê—from the French pédé, short for pédéraste. Before the French occupation, our Vietnamese did not have a name for queer bodies—because they were seen, like all bodies, fleshed and of one source—and I didn’t want to introduce this part of me using the epithet for criminals.’  - this whole section exceptional and left be speechless, goosebumps all the way up my arm. 

‘To see yourself still yourself is a refuge men who have not been denies cannot know.’

‘In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhó. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhó mę knông? I flinch, thinking of you meant, Do you remember me? / I miss you more then i remover you.’

‘If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you’re born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly.’

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse

Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Racism, Xenophobia, and War

Minor: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Cancer, Homophobia, Sexual content, Grief, and Abortion

pzrlla's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Cancer, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Dementia, Grief, War, and Classism

gabbygolucky96's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

This is the book I have found that most excellently encapsulates the complexities of generational trauma, abuse, queer identity, and the messiness of it all. This is a book that I will definitely need to reread over the years because it is impossible to take it all in on the first read. This book is powerful.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Mental illness, Physical abuse, and War

barath_6023's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A beautiful book that I can only describe as "intensely personal", which I found was a work of fiction after many pages in! 

It's a letter from the protagonist, Little Dog, to his mother, but it's also a letter to everything that has lead up to who he is, who they are in the world. 

The story of them and other different characters(Lan, Paul, etc.) , the events and countries they drift across lends well to the poetic and stream of consciousness style. However, I did find some parts of the book to get lost in metaphors and purple poetry. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Sexual content

Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, and War

Minor: Alcoholism, Cancer, Death, Domestic abuse, and Abortion

that01loser's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, and Grief