On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
‘A masterpiece’ – Max Porter
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3.9 • 78 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION
'A marvel' Marlon James
Brilliant, heart-breaking and highly original, discover Ocean Vuong's shattering coming of age novel.
This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family's struggle to forge a new future.
And it serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog's life his mother has never known - episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion - all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation.
'Reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty does hard and important work' Rebecca Solnit
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Vuong's frank first novel (after Night Sky with Exit Wounds) takes the form of a letter from a man to his illiterate mother in which 28-year-old Little Dog, a writer who's left the impoverished Hartford, Conn., of his youth for New York City, retraces his coming of age. His childhood is marked by abuse from his overworked mother, as well as the traumas he's inherited from his mother's and grandmother's experiences during the Vietnam War. Having left Vietnam with them as a young boy, and after the incarceration of his father, Little Dog's attempts to assimilate include contending with language barriers and the banal cruelty of the supposedly well-intentioned. He must also adapt to the world as a gay man and as a writer the novel's beating heart rests in Little Dog's first, doomed love affair with another teenage boy, and in his attempts to describe what being a writer truly is. Vuong's prose shines in the intimate scenes between the young men, but sometimes the lyricism has a straining, vague quality ("They say nothing lasts forever but they're just scared it will last longer than they will love it"; "But the thing about forever is you can't take it back"). Nevertheless, this is a haunting meditation on loss, love, and the limits of human connection.
Customer Reviews
On Earth, we’re reading this
Author: Asian-American born in Saigon 1988, now teaches writing at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Renowned poet widely published, multiple awards. Openly gay. One of 100 leading global thinkers according to Foreign Policy magazine 2016.
Premise: Series of letters from successful Asian-American writer to his illiterate mother, who came to US as a refugee after Vietnam war.
Plot: Not a lot. The narrative is short and loops back and forth chronologically and turns into a gay love story in the second half.
Prose: Extraordinarily intimate and lyrical. Like nothing I've read before.
Character development: Limited but effective.
Bottom line: There's a lot of (too much?) autobiographical metafiction around nowadays. This is one of the better examples.
Astonishing
I really have no words for the beauty of this book. It will stay with me for a long while.