On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
A Novel
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4.3 • 958 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times bestseller • Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction • Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling
New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
“A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read...Ocean Vuong is a master. This book a masterpiece.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There and Wandering Stars
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous 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 — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
Named a Best Book of the Year by:
GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and more!
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Cultural and sexual identity are never easy to navigate—and when you’re grappling with both, it becomes even harder. In poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, a young man nicknamed Little Dog pours his heart out in a long letter to his mother, revealing both his budding queerness and his struggle to reconcile his Vietnamese heritage with an American upbringing. Vuong—a 2019 MacArthur Fellow—draws on his own childhood experiences, giving the novel’s gut-wrenching and vulnerable emotions even more depth and urgency. We rooted for Little Dog to find a way to heal from trauma and embrace happiness while marveling at Vuong’s startling language.
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
Beautiful writing.
I think I’ll start by appreciating the beauty of Vuong’s writing. The book really sheds light on the interplay of so many things happening at once; identity, first as a Vietnamese person within the intimacy of home, and then as a Vietnamese immigrant navigating the outside world in America. That duality feels constant and unresolved. It also explores sexuality and the vulnerability of loving who you love, especially when faced with parents who already have fixed ideas of who you’re supposed to become. That moment where his mother asks, ‘when did this all start? I gave birth to a healthy, normal boy. I know that. When?’, captures so much pain, misunderstanding, and love all at once. What stood out most is how Vuong captures the cultural and emotional shifts between home, school, and work. The way you can live entire versions of your life that your parents never fully see or understand. There’s a quiet loneliness in that, but also a kind of resilience. ALSO the inclusion of Vietnamese history and reflection of the way was brilliant. It’s definitely a thoughtful and layered book!
Absolutely amazing
I’m not a huge fan of poetry yet this book makes me think I should look into this authors poetry. This is one of the most beautifully written books I have read in a long time. I read this book in a day and a half. I will read it again, there is so much depth in every page and I want to catch it all. It amazing me the wisdom expressed and how there are parts I can relate to sooo much. While so many cultural differences there are still internal struggles and familial struggles and patterns we can all relate
Seriously one of my favorite books that I have read.
the longest poem i ever read
i could hear the blood pounding in my ears the entire time i read this book