Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong writes so beautifully and so poetically. I felt I was able to enjoy this book because I saw it less as a novel and more as a poetic memoir in the form of vignettes, which he uses to narrate his experiences growing up as a child in the United States as a Vietnamese immigrant post-Vietnam war to a parent with PTSD. Vuong's writing is so vividly melancholic and haunting, and these feelings follow even during the soft vulnerability of his childhood and youth. There's so much introspection but also a stillness as if no matter how far time and space takes you, you will always be haunted by this current time, place, and feeling.

I want to include one of my favorite quotes from the book: "I know you believe in reincarnation. I don’t know if I do but I hope it’s real. Because then maybe you’ll come back here next time around. Maybe you’ll be a girl and maybe your name will be Rose again, and you’ll have a room full of books with parents who will read you bedtime stories in a country not touched by war. Maybe then, in that life and in this future, you’ll find this book and you’ll know what happened to us. And you’ll remember me. Maybe."

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swbunn's review against another edition

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challenging 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

5.0

Beautiful and engaging.

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gvstyris's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad slow-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

4.75

I had thought sex was to breach new ground, despite terror, that as long as the world did not see us, its rules did not apply. But I was wrong.
The rules, they were already inside us.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is an epistolary novel defined by its premise: the letter's intended recipient -- the main character's mother -- is illiterate, and will thus never read it. This permits a unique vulnerability, which, in addition to Vuong's lyrical prose and sensitivity towards his characters, is perhaps the greatest strength of this narrative.

That being said, I understand why this novel won't be for everyone. Our protagonist, Little Dog, tells his life story through a series of non-linear digressions that echo his mind's messy categorisation of 20+ years of memories. Little Dog himself notes that "I'm not telling you a story so much as a shipwreck--the pieces floating, finally legible." It's a structure quite uncommon in Western literature, utilising the Japanese narrative technique of kishōtenketsu to reject a clear plot in favor of replicating reality. Vuong's writing asked me to reconsider what it means to write a "novel," and I'm completely in awe of his creative process. I'm similarly excited to check out more of his poetry.

On an emotional level, I found Little Dog's story of coming-of-age (or as Vuong puts it, "coming-of-art") as a queer Vietnamese-American boy to be incredibly eye-opening. His empathy towards his grandmother/mother's struggles with PTSD really stuck with me, as well as his consideration of his place in wider American culture. In truth, I initially struggled to read about Little Dog's relationship with queerness because of its emphasis both on physicality/sex and trauma. I've since finished the novel, however, with an increased understanding of why we need to represent a range of queer experiences -- and do so with sensitivity.

What a read. I'll leave you with another line of Vuong's beautiful prose:

All this time I told myself we were born from war--but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty.
Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence--but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.

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arainey's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad fast-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? No

3.5

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elisegmusic's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

This novel was absolutely stunning. Told in the format of a letter written from a son to a mother, it weaves through time, meandering through the boy’s past and present and roaming through the time before he was born through the stories told by his mother and grandmother.

All the characters are lovable, though flawed, with filled out backstories and motivations - A boy growing up trying to find his identity. A mother who moves to America but cannot speak English. A grandmother with schizophrenia who isn’t quite sure where she is in the present, but tells beautiful, spiraling stories about the past.

This book is poetic, but accessible, and it could easily be read in one day if you have the time. This is definitely a story I will be recommending time and time again.

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kimac2's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A little slow to get into, but quite beautiful. Heartbreaking but hopeful at the same time. The audiobook was very good I enjoyed hearing it in the author’s voice.

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gaypoetree's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

wa wa wa wa waaaaaa. I love poets! I LOVE POETS!!!!! I AM CRYING OVER HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me start by saying: when some people criticize the book as “too lyrical,” I understand and in some sense even agree. There are definitely lines in there that feel like they were inserted just because they sound poetic (though Vuong perhaps mocks this himself at one point, saying “that meant nothing but you have it now”), but that is very few lines in an almost frustratingly tightly-woven work. In some sense, those lines were a relief to me. I could brush something aside.

I don’t seek to rate books by perfection; that’s silly. Five stars, to me, is a work that made me consider the world in new ways, feel big feelings, and that I would– WILL– eagerly return to again and again. Check, check, check. Five-star book. The only book I own that is more dog-eared or underlined than this is the book that I used while writing my undergrad capstone.

To avoid this being too long, let me rest on what truly impressed me about the novel, and what edges it into prose poem territory in my mind: the very basic structure of the story reflects its overwhelmingly myriad and complex themes. I don’t just mean the way the switch between tenses relates to the conflict of switching between languages with different relationships to time, or how the invocation of parataxis as a poetic form also renders the characters as different images somehow modifying one another. I mean the little things, too. Theme: writing as a form of liberation that, yet, was given to the narrator by the oppressive culture. Expression: a repeated callback to beginning sentences with “and” or “because” (a thing he was taught never to do) in moments of resistance or of joy. Theme: navigating multiple languages of care, some of which are at odds with each other, often all at once. Expression: The abandonment of the epistolary form into something more obviously poetic when the narrator begins to speak of a personal trauma which is not familial, which his mother does not necessarily share.

I need to stop before I get too excited again. Yeah dude. Good book!

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