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A review by iseefeelings
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
challenging
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
What should you do with somebody's field of memory that slowly clings to your heart and shakes yours?
The narrator - Little Dog - roams in the past and present in which stories of three generations intertwine. Reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous invokes my turbulence in the past, how an act of endurance is (on some level) so familiar to children growing up in complex family backgrounds. The author’s marginalised identity resonates with my frustration – often rooted in the multicultural childhood I grew up with and in passive discrimination of race and social class since I moved to a new country.
Even when reading in a foreign language other than my mother tongue doesn't make the violence motif in the Vietnam War easier to indulge. Vuong scattered a few scenes of brutality which are essential to bringing out the narrator's family history yet they were all so powerful. Indeed, I had a hard time flipping through the scene of a group of men slicing the brain of a live macaque monkey.
Trauma. Sex. Death. Violence. Love. Ocean Vuong describes them masterly and his words enhanced one’s personal experiences and filled all the gaps in between — perpetually adding to one’s mind a whole picture like no other. I haven’t read much fiction in the last few years and this book pulls me back to the fascination of reading fiction: how it extends beyond your account and you live more than one life for a moment through imagination and the craft of writing. Line by line, the words appear lyrically and elliptically in Ocean Vuong's prose poem. The originality in Vuong's work is astonishing, or as a writer on Los Angeles Times put it, "an outpouring of emotion". It has the momentum of a good epistolary novel and the intimacy of a true letter which the readers only have the privilege to know in hindsight.
Towards the end of the book, there is a moment when a white man (the narrator's grandfather) utters broken words to say goodbye to his first love - the narrator’s grandmother - my heart sank and I held my tears. I don’t know why I had to hold it in, though. It’s too real.
The narrator - Little Dog - roams in the past and present in which stories of three generations intertwine. Reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous invokes my turbulence in the past, how an act of endurance is (on some level) so familiar to children growing up in complex family backgrounds. The author’s marginalised identity resonates with my frustration – often rooted in the multicultural childhood I grew up with and in passive discrimination of race and social class since I moved to a new country.
Even when reading in a foreign language other than my mother tongue doesn't make the violence motif in the Vietnam War easier to indulge. Vuong scattered a few scenes of brutality which are essential to bringing out the narrator's family history yet they were all so powerful. Indeed, I had a hard time flipping through the scene of a group of men slicing the brain of a live macaque monkey.
Trauma. Sex. Death. Violence. Love. Ocean Vuong describes them masterly and his words enhanced one’s personal experiences and filled all the gaps in between — perpetually adding to one’s mind a whole picture like no other. I haven’t read much fiction in the last few years and this book pulls me back to the fascination of reading fiction: how it extends beyond your account and you live more than one life for a moment through imagination and the craft of writing. Line by line, the words appear lyrically and elliptically in Ocean Vuong's prose poem. The originality in Vuong's work is astonishing, or as a writer on Los Angeles Times put it, "an outpouring of emotion". It has the momentum of a good epistolary novel and the intimacy of a true letter which the readers only have the privilege to know in hindsight.
Towards the end of the book, there is a moment when a white man (the narrator's grandfather) utters broken words to say goodbye to his first love - the narrator’s grandmother - my heart sank and I held my tears. I don’t know why I had to hold it in, though. It’s too real.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Racism, and Grief