On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is devastatingly beautiful, the type of book with sentences and a construction so wonderful that you kind of wish, in part, you'd been able to write yourself. But of course, only Ocean Vuong could have achieved it all with such precision. Ultimately, the beauty of the blend of poetry and prose made me wish for more of what Roxanne Gay calls, "more substance to hold all that style."
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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. 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, masculinity, and our current American moment—immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma but undergirded by compassion and tenderness. 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.
There's no denying that this book is beautiful. It is constructed in a way that makes you yearn for the next beautiful line, and my copy is chockfull of highlights that will easily tell you which lines were my favorites. The story is fragmented, but with a clear conceit: this is a letter from the narrator to his mother. I feel like more authors are using conceits like this, so the brilliance of this construction didn't hit me as hard as the idea of memory did. Because the narrator is compiling all of these moments from his life to talk to his mother about, a lot of his experience is colored by what he remembers, and how those memories are warped by present-day experience, and more accessible memories. The book itself feels fragmented—across time, space—and I love how that supports Vuong's message about memory.
I love books that play around with form, and Vuong does that brilliantly here. Vuong's poetry background makes itself clear in the precision of word choice in the prose, but I felt the strongest sections of the novel were the ones constructed entirely in narrative poems. I feel like you can tell that Vuong excels at poetry, and that's where the themes and message of the story become clearer. It was also hard for me to see the prose sections of the novel the same after the sucker-punch brilliance and beauty of the poetry sections. Either way, I don't think anyone without a poetry background could have made the prose of a story with heavy topics sound so lyrical, and it's clear that the writing of this book is what sets is apart from so many others.
While I loved the writing and had the utmost fun highlighting all of my favorite lines, I ultimately wished there was a bit more of a story to follow. Roxanne Gay's review of this one capture my feelings toward the novel exactly. While I appreciate the way you could dissect all of the metaphors and meanings, I wanted a clearer sense of what Little Dog learned about all of this experiences, and where he expected he'd go next. Maybe that's not the point at all (I'm sure it isn't) but I was just left feeling rather empty by the end because I wasn't entirely sure what to do with all the beauty of the sentences. Again, I'm sure I could dissect it all and figure it out! But I suppose I just wanted it to be clearer by the end, the thread tied together more cleanly, the jagged piece of reconstructed memory to put together a picture you could describe.
I have seen so many poetry books lately that seem amazing, so I honestly might break into poetry a bit here! My favorite parts of this novel were the poetry bits, and I think it's a sign to check out Vuong's poetry, which I'm so down to do! Until then.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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