While this book is beautifully written, there was no clear sense of direction. The author kept switching focuses to frequently for me and that's why I did not enjoy it as much. However, it's still a solid read. ( )

Of all the adjectives that come to mind when thinking of this book, tender is the one that lingers. Written as a letter from a son to his illiterate mother, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is at once emotional, raw, saturated, lyrical, crushing, sanguine, and romantic.

As Little Dog, Vuong tends to a verdant emotional garden filled with trauma and love in equal measure. It is the story of an outsider who begins to find himself and his place in the world through the history of his Vietnamese mother and grandmother and the memories of Trevor, his 'all-American' first love.

This book is powerful in all the right places and although it can tend toward the unstructured whimsy of poetry at time, it finds its way back to solid footing time after time. Descriptions of time spent with his loved ones are expressed with such detail and precision as to place you in the room with all of your senses on high alert. There are passages so incredibly diaphanous in prose yet profuse in imagery that my breath would catch.

Stunning and beautiful. And so very tender. ( )

“… to be an American boy, and then an American boy with a gun, is to move from one end of a cage to another…”

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is an epistolary novel, a son’s letter to his mother, Rose. A collection of reflection-driven vignettes, the stories loosely follow the author’s experiences as a poor Vietnamese American boy living with his mother and grandmother Connecticut. Its intensely personal tales explore existential ideas of what it means to be free, to live, love and die.

While Vuong writes from the heart and, indeed, writes very well, I wish the book was not so outstandingly sad. Though powerful, the book blasts wave after wave of pain, loss, torture, abuse, addiction, violence, tragedy, and ceaseless longing to the point that it risks desensitizing the reader.

Taken as a whole, I found it very hard to rate On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. If, at its heart, the book is true, one cannot help but feel the author’s sense of longing and loss. If it is indeed fiction at its core, the book comes across as trying to outpace Yanagihara’s A Little Life in the misery porn department. ( )

It took me almost a month to read 245 pages, so that's never a good sign. Interestingly, I bought this and started this book when it first came out, and it wasn't grabbing me right off the bat, so I figured I'd return to it later.

Now is later. And now I see I should have probably followed my initial instincts, but so many of my reader friends gave this novel 4 or 5 stars, that I just felt I needed to see for myself.

On a sentence level, I get the high ratings. Vuong is a poet, and the language used here is beautiful and requires thought and concentration in order to discern the meaning. Unfortunately, to me, the fragmentary nature of the writing, the constant need to read between the lines, gets old quickly. I want to be moved by writing not exhausted by it.

The frame of the story is Little Dog, a Vietnamese boy growing up in Hartford, CT, is writing a letter to his mother. One she will never read as she is illiterate. The "letter" details the history of his family, Little Dog's sexual awakening, and musings on many social issues. I think this book is definitely at it's finest when it was discussed his relationship with Trevor . . .these sections were evoked so well and the poetic language took what might often be a crass recapitulation of sexual acts and evoked them in new ways. I wish the whole book was about this. Alas no.

The latter portion of the story just gets more and more fragmented to the point where I just wanted it to be over. And finally it was.

My conclusion: just not for me. ( )

I’m not always a fan of books that change times in a life all the time. But the shippers here work as the author styles the story as a letter that rambles. He has some tough things to describe. Very well written. ( )