A review by deeb_reads
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

“Some people say history moves in a spiral, not the line we have come to expect. We travel through time in a circular trajectory, our distance increasing from the epicenter only to return again, one circle removed.” (27)

Most people in my life LOVED this book. Someone I knew put it in their gender studies thesis. I liked it and really loved some parts of it, but I felt a little let down by it in other places. Perhaps this is the tragic fate of every book that arrives with a ton of hype– it’ll invariably let some people down.

The novel is split into three parts, following the coming of age of Little Dog, a Vietnamese American boy who grows up in poverty with his refugee mother and grandmother in Hartford. The first section of the book follows Little Dog’s childhood, interspersed with stories of his mother and grandmother’s lives. Some of the writing is quite beautiful and quotable, especially as Little Dog struggles to understand his often enigmatic and harsh mother. At times, though, I couldn’t help but compare it to other books/ story collections with poetic writing about intergenerational trauma like Luster by Raven Leilani or Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So. Maybe I’ve been reading too many Asian/ POC trauma books, but some of the writing about migration and family history felt a bit trite. (Like using monarch butterfly migration as an analogy for… migration?) Some parts also confused me, like one scene that interweaves flashbacks of Little Dog’s grandmother’s story with a seemingly unrelated, rather gruesome scene of a bunch of guys eating the brains of a monkey. 

To me, the second part read the strongest. It follows a teenage Little Dog and his starcrossed relationship with Trevor, an older white boy he meets while working at a tobacco farm. Here, the book is the most grounded, relaying rich sensory descriptions of Little Dog and Trevor’s temporarily idyllic summer and alternating moments of tenderness and cruelty between them. I found Little Dog’s relationship with Trevor to be the most compelling. Through their relationship, Vuong explores masculinity, coming of age, sexuality, and desire with eloquent and fresh-feeling prose. These were the parts I kept coming back to with a pencil to underline. He also captures the bleakness of life in the Northeast, especially for people like Trevor and Little Dog, who struggle with poverty and complicated or abusive relationships with their families. While readers may not necessarily agree with the choices that Trevor or Little Dog make, they still feel very human and understandable. 

The third part of the book returns to Little Dog as a young man, a burgeoning writer who has left Hartford for New York City but is still tied to the tragic ends of the people he left behind. This section again felt a bit uneven in writing quality. I enjoyed reading about Little Dog’s exploration of creative writing and its limited power, as well as the book’s continued discussion of familial memory and addiction. The writing kind of goes off the deep end in some parts, slipping into a poetic style that some people might like, but I found it a bit confusing and a detraction from the novel’s story. There are a couple extended metaphors, like one about a table that may or may not exist, that just made me throw up my hands and hope it wasn’t important.

Although this novel is billed as a story about refugee families, I think the strongest parts of it were actually the relationship subplot in the second act, and the novel’s following thoughts on masculinity, sexuality, and desire. I’ve found much stronger work about migration and its intergenerational impacts in other works, and at times I felt like Vuong wanted to write a queer coming of age novel but got pushed into making the family relationships a bigger part of the story.

From a pacing and character perspective, the book is mostly character driven, made of often nonlinear vignettes. Some of them felt a bit random at times, to be honest. As a narrator, Little Dog is not perhaps the strongest character, but I still enjoyed much of his insights. I also didn’t feel like I got much of a sense of his mother as a character, even though she is supposed to be the center and purpose of the novel. She does come across as a complex character who cares about her son in her own, occasionally misguided way, but I felt like her relationship with Little Dog didn’t feel as rich as the relationship between Little Dog and Trevor. Perhaps this is because our parents are always a bit incomprehensible to us, but I was a bit let down in this regard.

Overall, I’d still recommend this book, though with a few caveats. Some parts of it are really strong verbal gut punches, but other parts, especially the more abstract poetic ones, seem like a distraction from the actual storyline. However, I did enjoy its wrestling with topics like addiction, complicated family dynamics, and sexuality with nuance and grace.

 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings