On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Dear Readers: I forgot to tell you, I am taking some vacation over the next month (what it being August and all), and so I will be posting sporadically. Don’t worry, if something important comes up (remember, I don’t think anything is all that important in the great scheme of things), I will post something.

I just finished the book On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. This is one of the big books for the summer in the United States and the United Kingdom, although it’s not really a summer book. The reviews are very good. The Washington Post calls it “permanently stunning,” while NPR says it is “gorgeous all the way through,” and The Guardian says Vuong “mines his extraordinary family story with passion and beauty.”

The book is an epistolary novel in form – it is letter written to his illiterate mother. The form is only loosely used throughout the novel, but he does use the second person (you) to good effect. Also, it reads like memoir at points, probably because a part of it have been published as memoir (this part in the New Yorker).

The story is lyrical. It circles back on itself multiple times. It is also two parts smashed together. The first part is about his grandmother and mother, the second is about his first love with another boy named Trevor.

Interspersed are a few chapters that are basically prose poetry, or even just poetry, that alternate between varying subjects, including Tiger Woods and the opioid crisis in the US.

I found the first part almost too opaque, meaning that it was so difficult to follow what he was talking about that I put the book down and didn’t pick up for a week. The second part is more straightforward, even though there are those interspersed sections.

I don’t really like lyrical books. I like my poetry here, and my prose there. I guess I am just a plot person – I need plot to keep me interested. There is plot here, but that’s not why to read the novel.

In fact, I found the book a little bit annoying at times, because there were so many phrases that were just opaque and in some cases maybe too meangingful. So meaningful that they mean nothing. Like this:

It’s late in the season—which means the winter roses, in full bloom along the national bank, are suicide notes.

But then he writes something like this;

They say nothing lasts forever but they’re just scared it will last longer than they can love it.

Or this, which another reviewer point out:

The one good thing about national anthems is that we’re already on our feet, and therefore ready to run.

I really felt that the writing on the relationship between Trevor and the narrator was excellent. It showed a queer coming of age story that was so real, including very frank talk about sex between men. These scenes weren’t always beautiful (sex isn’t always), but it was entrancing.

I came away glad that I read the book and very much looking forward to reading more from Vuong. But I can’t say that the book itself was completely cohesive or really kept my attention at all times. That of course could be the fault of me, rather than Vuong.

In terms of Vietnam, Vuong, despite being born in Vietnam and speaking Vietnamese fluently, comes at the country as a tourist rather than a native. There is a scene with drag queens that come to help distract a family after the death of someone. That was fascinating, and something that I haven’t seen before and didn’t know about.

Overall, the book is worth reading, with some caveats that at times it is slow going and overly lyrical.