On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel
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.
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Readers say *On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous* is a deeply poetic novel that mirrors memory’s fluid, nonlinear flow, focusing on language’s power to wo...
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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
242 pages
What’s it about?
Their is no mistaking that Ocean Vuong is a gifted poet. This is his first novel. The book is written in the form of a letter- from a son to his mother. It explores the complicated relationship between “little dog” and his Vietnamese mother and grandmother. It is about being heard in a world that does not want to acknowledge you. It is about the power of endurance.
What did it make me think about?
How War changes not just the generation that lives through it, but generations to come.
Should I read it?
This was an uneven book for me. The writing is poetic and beautiful but the story is told in different rhythms . That may be just what Ocean Vuong was going for but it made for a different reading experience. At times the sheer sadness of this story made it hard to read. Some might be bothered by the graphic gay love story. I myself found this relationship integral to the story... I would recommend this coming of age story to anyone who likes a poetic novel.
Quote-
There’s a word Trevor once told me about, one he learned from Buford, who served in the Navy in Hawaii during the Korean War: kipuka. The piece of land that’s spared after a lava flow runs down the slope of a hill- an island formed from what survives the smallest apocalypse. Before the lava descended, scorching the moss along the hill, that piece of land was insignificant, just another scrap in an endless mass of green. Only by enduring does it earn its name. Lying on the mat with you, I cannot help but want us to be our own kipuka, our own aftermath, visible. But I know better.”
If you liked this try-
*A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Exit West by Moshin Hamid
Girl At War by Sara Novic
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
242 pages
What’s it about?
Their is no mistaking that Ocean Vuong is a gifted poet. This is his first novel. The book is written in the form of a letter- from a son to his mother. It explores the complicated relationship between “little dog” and his Vietnamese mother and grandmother. It is about being heard in a world that does not want to acknowledge you. It is about the power of endurance.
What did it make me think about?
How War changes not just the generation that lives through it, but generations to come.
Should I read it?
This was an uneven book for me. The writing is poetic and beautiful but the story is told in different rhythms . That may be just what Ocean Vuong was going for but it made for a different reading experience. At times the sheer sadness of this story made it hard to read. Some might be bothered by the graphic gay love story. I myself found this relationship integral to the story... I would recommend this coming of age story to anyone who likes a poetic novel.
Quote-
There’s a word Trevor once told me about, one he learned from Buford, who served in the Navy in Hawaii during the Korean War: kipuka. The piece of land that’s spared after a lava flow runs down the slope of a hill- an island formed from what survives the smallest apocalypse. Before the lava descended, scorching the moss along the hill, that piece of land was insignificant, just another scrap in an endless mass of green. Only by enduring does it earn its name. Lying on the mat with you, I cannot help but want us to be our own kipuka, our own aftermath, visible. But I know better.”
If you liked this try-
*A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Exit West by Moshin Hamid
Girl At War by Sara Novic
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach
nevzalo ma to. možno neideálna voľba na dovolenku.
príbeh pekný, naratív zaujímavý, ale akosi som sa pričasto strácala namiesto ponárala.
a mala by som si tuším začať dopredu pozerať trigger warnings (animal cruelty)
príbeh pekný, naratív zaujímavý, ale akosi som sa pričasto strácala namiesto ponárala.
a mala by som si tuším začať dopredu pozerať trigger warnings (animal cruelty)
At the beginning of the book, the narrator implies he’s aware of the rules of writing and then breaks them. I continued to feel that on every page. The writing moves the way memory does: looping, pausing, returning, breaking off mid-thought with no singular focal plot point or storyline. The real center of the book isn’t plot at all, but language, its evolution, its violence, its tenderness, and its power to both wound and heal. I don’t think I’ve read another book that so expertly illustrates what words can do to a person.
This is a book about hunger in so many forms: the hunger to be understood, to belong, to love, to name feelings that don’t yet have language. The prose is so beautiful that it made me greedy. I wanted more, more, more, not because I didn’t get enough, but because each page felt like something I needed to sit with and also immediately consume. Vuong builds these vivid, intimate vignettes from fragments of his characters’ lives, Little Dog, his mother, his grandmother, his lovers, and somehow turns them into something universal. The writing is so exquisite that it hurt. I found myself sobbing not just at what was being said, but at how perfectly it was said.
I devoured this book like a tub of ice cream at 3 a.m. when I couldn’t afford therapy - urgently, desperately, and with the full awareness that you’ll deal with the emotional aftermath later. I read it too quickly, but I know it’ll sit in my body for a while before I fully digest it, and I’m certain I’ll come back to it again and again.
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