Ocean VuongRessenyes

Not a good match for me. There were parts that were good- the immigrant experience, the underbelly of US society, the character of his grandmother Lan, but also parts that were gratuitous like cruelty to animals and the mechanical details of sex that seemed to have been randomly inserted just because. The prose is fine in general and there are some good lines, though I wasn’t enraptured as others seem to have been, which is a similar experience to how his poetry has struck me.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous follows Little Dog through a letter to his mother. His whole life, he has lived in a limbo between two different cultures and languages, which have hindered his ability to connect with his mother. So, he uses this letter, despite his mother being illiterate, to create a form of connection with her through language, which he has never been able to fully achieve.

The writing is exquisite and beautiful, filled with poetry, prose, and musings on life and human connections. It works really well at showing the disconnect Little Dog has with language and communicating, specifically with his mother.

I listened to this on audiobook, and I will absolutely be purchasing this book so I can re-read and annotate it.

Trigger warnings:
- Drug abuse/addiction
- Vietnam war
- Animal abuse
- Homophobia
- Xenophobia/racism
- Abuse (domestic, child, sexual)

This book has eviscerated me.

beautiful!!!

Having finished reading this novel, On Earth we're briefly gorgeous, one looks back at its poetic title and wonders what it means. Like the words and the story elements in the novel it seems the five words that make up the title are each beautiful, and they are seemingly connected; they seemingly suggest an ideal state that we might long for, but more likely these five words are disconnected, they are simply suspended in the air.

Reading On Earth we're briefly gorgeous, you also have to recall the time frame of the Vietnam War. Since it took place before I was born, and ended during my early youth, nonetheless, the images of the boat refugees is clearly in my mind. Significant dates and the start of the conflict as early as 1955, the end of American involvement in 1973 and the fall of Saigon in 1975, and the subsequent migration crisis of the Vietnamese boat people from its height in the late 1970s till the beginning of the 1990s. In as far as On Earth we're briefly gorgeous autobiographical, that means that the flight it set in that final decade of the late 1980s.

Much of the story is quite horrible. Little Dog, as the main character is dubbed, has made a narrow escape, but misery follows his. The history of his grandmother, the troubles of his mother which also beset Little Dog in the new land, as he often needs to solve their problem follow him wherever he goes. In fact, the misery left behind in Vietnam is only replaced by different misery in the new land. A brief moment of bliss and love is foreshortened by his lover's death from drug abuse.

Little Dog is in the centre of all this misery. Still, all is dressed in the most beauteous, poetic language. Beauty, in the form of language: poetry, beautiful language surrounds him. It is where he turns to find relief. None in his family could read, but from the age of 11 Little Dog manages to read. Writing becomes the way to deal with his life's misery. The book, though not in linear chronological order, is a letter, written to his mother.½

This book ripped my heart out, massaged it and broke it apart, then handed it back to me softer. I would re-read this book immediately if there weren't so many other books out there that I can't wait to get my hands on. I already miss Little Dog, Lan, Rose, and Trevor

This was a beautifully written book and the audiobook narration was just full of emotion. I think it hopped around a little bit too much for me and I actually found it too poetic for myself, though I’m sure others will love it for this reason. Because of the skilled writing, a few descriptions come off as very graphic. Overall, a very good book.

This is one of my all-time favorite books, also one of the few in my lifetime that compelled me to annotate and save passages. The beauty in Ocean's writing is evident throughout, and his ability to transform words into a visual work of art is a common theme in this book. It became clear from the beginning that Ocean Vuong is a poet, evident in how skillfully he strings words together to create the most beautiful sentences. I was amazed, enlightened, and awestruck while reading this masterpiece. If there's one book to read in your lifetime, I argue that this should be the one.

3.5 rounded to 4. Unfortunately, I feel like poetry is wasted on me, but I can appreciate the medium for processing grief on death of his mother and feeling through other complicated personal relationships.

Overdue, so a quick read for me with little time to dwell on it.

Words to say to family who will never see them

Lyrical debut, memoir-like in dealing with generational traumas.

I read this on the kindle app, so unfortunately I was inconsistent in steady reading so next time, I'll try to not have month long gaps between sessions.

June 2019

The very lyrical style of writing meant , I initially had to reread, after my last book of light fiction. I was not surprised to learn that his previous work included books of poetry.
This is a very personal account of the life of a Vietnamese immigrant family in the United States and yes it would appear to based on the author's own life. It has a very fluid timeline moving through events in his childhood and indeed between Vietnam and the United States. Some of it's content reminds me of [Demon Copperfield].

"Novel" does not seem the most apt descriptor for this collection of prosepoetry. And no, that is not a typo. The language is reason alone to pick up this book. It is like watching a painter. If this is at the sacrifice of plot and conventional narrative, so be it. The language of this book is extraordinary.

And while there is not a single trajectory (really more a rhizomatic network of recollections and memories), we meet characters who embody truth in their realness, whether it is the protagonist's mother in her ability to be both mother and demon, the grandmother in her frailty and strength, or Trevor, in his sexual awakening and moments of tenderness juxtaposed with every red-blooded American masculine trope. Most of the characters seem to be reconciling (or not) the opposites within.

Where I grew slightly weary was in the sexual awakening passages. While written beautifully, I relegate that many words devoted to sex to a different genre, and don't prefer it taking up that much space in a "novel" where I anticipate some sort of narrative arc. The arc is there, but it is subtle, and the retracing of steps/revisiting of sexual experiences found me scrolling through the pages of the e-book a bit faster in places. Mileage will definitely vary on this front, so I offer this criticism in humility and with full acknowledgment that it is my personal preference.

As I said, however, I don't think I've ever read such a poetic novel and it is well worth the time to see how words can be briefly gorgeous.

3.75

4 stars for the first half of the book, 2 stars for the last half, so I averaged to get 3 stars.

“because it’s summer” ohhh my god.

good lord

"Rain : to give something a name just to watch it fall." Damn.

"....I was born because someone was starving..." Knocked the breath out of my lungs.

This stunning love letter novel of a young Vietnamese writer, Little Dog, to his mother is poetic brilliance. Ocean Vuong refuses to let the reader by bogged down with flowery writing. Devastating sequences about the history of his grandmother’s journey are richly observed. The love story with Trevor will rip off your skin. The quiet desperation of the writing is a highlight of the book. His mom Rose works in a nail salon and is visited by a woman customer who has a prosthetic leg. When she asks Rose to massage her missing limb, I became enveloped and dissolved to tears. The cathartic revelation of Little Dog to his mother about being Gay is other worldly.

Absolutely love the beautiful writing style.

Nope. Not at all my kind of book in spite of all the rave reviews. Did not finish.

"The piano drips its little notes, like rain dreaming itself whole."
What?
"The smell of sewage from the water plant stung my eyes just before the wind did with it what it does with the names of the dead, swept it behind me."
Ok, but wot?
"Because someone opened their mouth and built a structure with words and now I am doing the same time each time I see my hands and think table, think beginnings."
Hahaha, wot tho?

This book didn't speak to me at all. I really didn't connect with a lot of the metaphors and images, and there were a lot of metaphors and images. The book is self-consciously literary, both in the prose and in the refusal to just tell the story. Maybe those who loved it found that the non-linear structure reflected the nonlinear nature of memory, or something, but I wasn't remembering these events, I was reading about them. I would frequently get a paragraph or two into a section before I figured out who was who. The scene involving the author's grandmother in Vietnam was a mess of analepsis and prolepsis and more or less incomprehensible to me. To be fair, I wasn't exactly toiling to understand at that point because it didn't really seem to matter who was who because they were all really sad all the time. Any good book needs at least one laugh and this book had none. There is absolutely no humour or even wit in the pages.

I stuck with the book because it kept threatening to open out into a story, with each chapter slightly better than the last. Then the last three or four chapters were just mush. After each one I thought, "Ok, well at least that's over," assuming the remainder of the e-book was taken up with book club questions and other stuff, as they sometimes are. As it turned out, each time there was more, like in one of those Hollywood movies when they tie up every bow and the hero kisses the girl, then they cut to them getting married, now they have children for some reason, now they're burying the emotionally significant thing at the tree in the place, thank god there's the credits.

I wouldn't rule out reading another book by Ocean Vuong, but I would be poised to put it down on every one of the first hundred pages.

Needs more jokes.

I couldn't even make it through the first chapter, which was nothing but child abuse and PTSD. The writing is beautiful, but I just couldn't stomach it.

Pretty writing. A poetry novel.