This is a beautiful book. The way this book is written is just incredible. The lines bring this story to life with so much colour and texture you can imagine just what every scene looks like and what every character seems to be. Lines such as ‘He was only nine but he already had mastered the dialect of damaged American fathers’ is one of those lines that when you read it, you’re just like, yes, I know exactly at this moment what you mean.

This book reads like poetry, the use of metaphor is powerful in this book and how they tie the story to what happened in those years, and the stories they shares throughout the book about heritage (the Tiger Wood’s story comes to mind) makes this book so unique. We have so much revealed to us throughout this book about the narrator, about sexuality, about abuse and about their mother’s life and her decisions, it’s hard to decipher what exactly is the reveal, but the ending feels like these things being cast off through this book(?).

Vuong is an incredible storyteller and I want to read the poetry from this author now as I feel like if it’s anything like the gorgeous writing in this book, it’s going to be such an incredible read. The way they write is honest and raw and just seeps pain through the pages and if that’s your thing (for example, I feel Heart Berries is the nearest comparison I can make) then this book is the one for you.

Thirty-one year old Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese-born poet who moved to Connecticut with his extended family whilst still a toddler. Dyslexic, gay and agoraphobic his first collection of poems which explored some of these areas together with his experience of being from a background influenced by traumatic experiences was entitled “Night Sky With Exit Wounds” and achieved huge critical acclaim including the TS Eliot Prize in 2017.
Vuong has decided to follow this up with an autobiographical novel focusing on his childhood which has the main character exploring his relationship with his mother to whom the narrative is addressed in the form of a letter. Vuong’s gift for language rings clearly throughout as his writing is full of vivid images and episodic snapshots of memory that are clear and powerful. This is obviously a novel written by a poet. In fact, it was the deliciously poetic title that first drew me to this work. Having said that there is enough plot narrative in his tale of the boy known as “Little Dog” to ensure that this works very well as a novel.
Little Dog’s mother is a manicurist who works long hours and can erupt in explosions of violence. His grandmother, Lan, far more uprooted from her Vietnamese life than the other characters is ailing and is very much seen in terms of the damage inflicted on her via years of conflict, becoming increasingly distant to her family, but whose strength of spirit is evident in Little Dog’s memories. Perhaps more than the relationship between mother and son it is with the grandmother and grandson where the heart of this novel really lies.
The bullied, abused Little Dog has to grapple with his sexuality in a tough world of prescription drug addiction and struggling to get by. Alongside the narrative it is the visual images conjured continually by Vuong’s writing which brings this debut to life. Recurring images include butterflies migrating long distances and herding buffalos plunging off a cliff top feel very appropriate for the fragility, tenacity and bewilderment of these characters’ situations.
This work is less plot-driven than I would normally recommend but its sensitivity and power and linguistic richness would ensure a valuable reading experience.

The beautifully titled On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous feels like a (fictionalised) memoir, rather than a novel. Regardless, it's beautifully written and it has a distinct feel to it, dreamy at times, raw and visceral, at the other times.

Written in a non-linear way, this is a coming of age story, a coming out story. It's also an immigrant's story, peppered with Vietnam war experiences and the effects of the PTSD.
There's also a lot of violence in this novel, especially domestic violence but also sexual violence.

This is getting a lot of attention for a good reason. While it wasn't perfect, it was quite powerful and original. I'm looking forward to reading more by Ocean Vuong.

There are so many 5 star reviews for this book, so going into this one I felt confident I was going to add a stellar review myself. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a lyrical novel, concerning a letter of the main character, Little Dog, to his illiterate mother. Little Dog writes about his childhood and their Vietnamese-American family history. Reading it felt quite intimate, as if the author let us into his secrets. The narrative goes back and forth in non-chronological circles giving us snippets of memories in no particular order, which I found frustrating. The book is undeniably well written using some beautiful language but sadly it left me feeling cold as I couldn't quite connect with the characters or the story. Perhaps not an ideal book for me but I'm sure it will appeal to the fans of Ocean Vuong's poetry. Many thanks to the publisher for my review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Undoubtedly one of the best books I've read this year.

I received this book from Netgalley and Vintage PRH in exchange for an honest review.

I have not read Vuong's poetry earlier, and this book just makes me want to read them all. It is beautiful, lyrical and poetic. I admit it might be a little too flowery for those who generally do not enjoy lyrical prose. There are times of conflict and sorrow, where the seriousness of the situation is diluted by the melodiousness of the language. But I had no complains. I absolutely loved it and wanted to underline the whole book. I was very pleased to get my hands on a physical copy. This is essentially the journey of a man growing up - what it means to grow up gay, the strife, internal and external, during war, immigration and so on. It beautifully illustrates relationships and how they hold us together.

This was a highly anticipated release for me and I’m glad to say that it did not disappoint.
It was such an emotionally charged read that had such depth that I had to constantly take a break to take in I’d just read.

My only (tiny) criticism is that, although the writing was beautiful and lyrical, it was a little too... over-written, that at times it got lost in (unnecessary) details. I’m aware Vuong is a poet and this definitely comes across in here.

It was still a head-aching read and I’d highly recommend it.

"I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you’re born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly."

Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a hard novel to review and rate - I could easily justify a rating anywhere from 2 to 5 stars, and indeed found myself very much in agreement with two reviews from GR friends that come at either end of this spectrum.

Gumble's Yard's 5 star review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2833430262 highlights how the novel's construction is very deliberate, in particular pointing to this interview: https://lithub.com/ocean-vuong-interrogating-the-canon-and-literally-riding-a-bicycle-with-no-hands/

"I’m writing a novel composed of woven inter-genre fragments. To me, a book made entirely out of unbridged fractures feels most faithful to the physical and psychological displacement I experience as a human being. I’m interested in a novel that consciously rejects the notion that something has to be whole in order to tell a complete story. I also want to interrogate the arbitrary measurements of a “successful” literary work, particularly as it relates to canonical Western values. For example, we traditionally privilege congruency and balance in fiction, we want our themes linked, our conflicts “resolved,” and our plots “ironed out.” But when one arrives at the page through colonized, plundered, and erased histories and diasporas, to write a smooth and cohesive novel is to ultimately write a lie. In a way, I’m curious about a work that rejects its patriarchal predecessors as a way of accepting its fissured self. I think, perennially, of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée. This resistance to dominant convention is not only the isolated concern of marginalized writers—but all writers—and perhaps especially white writers, who can gain so much by questioning how the ways we value art can replicate the very oppressive legacies we strive to end."

And indeed the fractured and repetitive (lots of “the time when” and “the day that”) nature of the text is effective.

Vuong is best known as a poet, and the prose is at times beautiful:

"You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty. Opening the front door to the first snowfall of my life, you whispered, “Look.”"

Or this, which introduces the first love that defines much of his own life:

"Memory is a choice. You said that once, with your back to me, the way a god would say it. But if you were a god you would see them. You would look down at this grove of pines, the fresh tips flared lucent at each treetop , tender-damp in their late autumn flush. You would look past the branches, past the rusted light splintered through the brambles, the needles falling, one by one, as you lay your god eyes on them. You’d trace the needles as they hurled themselves past the lowest bow, toward the cooling forest floor, to land on the two boys lying side by side, the blood already dry on their cheeks."

Or this on language and punctuation:

"It is no accident, Ma, that the comma resembles a fetus—that curve of continuation. We were all once inside our mothers, saying, with our entire curved and silent selves, more, more, more. I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication."

And yet with each of these passages I also had the nagging doubt that I could really see through to the depth behind the imagery. The very beauty of the writing has the effect of diminishing the reader’s connection, by, perhaps deliberately, creating a protective carapace that prevents an emotional connection with the narrator. And those sentiments are expressed perfectly in Neil's (2 star) review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41880609-on-earth-we-re-briefly-gorgeous

The book also flits rather uneasily between a coming-out/of-age tale of the narrator himself, and a rather dream-like imagining of his mother(to whom the novel is addressed)'s life in Vietnam, complete with a rather vivid description and it felt unnecessary description of a meal of live monkey's brains which will trigger some readers (it didn't have any impact on me - although perhaps the distancing of the prose is one reason why).

And the poetry of the text in the US part is interrupted by an incongruously didactic treatment of opioid addiction in the US caused by prescription drugs. Another strand to the text on the golfer Tiger Woods works a little better as while the facts of his background have been extensively covered elsewhere (the narrator reproduces then from an ESPB profile) Vuong does give them a more personal slant:

"Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, one of the greatest golfers in the world is, like you, Ma, a direct product of the war in Vietnam."

Overall, a rather mixed bag, somewhat deliberately so, and one that didn't for me quite live up to the (considerable) hype. 3.5 stars but rounded up to 4 for its distinctiveness.

Recently, when I have opened my Goodreads web page, it has seemed to be full of people giving a lot of stars to this book and singing its praises in glowing reviews.

I opened the book with high hopes.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous uses a fragmented narrative to tell, or perhaps explore is a better word, the life of Little Dog, a son born to Vietnamese immigrants into the USA. The reader gradually pieces together the story of Little Dog’s mother (Rose) and grandmother (Lan) along with Little Dog’s own experiences growing up, especially his teenage love affair with Trevor.

Ocean Vuong is an award-winning poet and this is very evident in this, his first novel. Many of the narrative fragments read like poetry and it feels as though every word has been agonised over before being committed to paper.

I should have loved this book. I have said time and time again that I look for atmosphere above plot in a book and Vuong’s fragmentary, poetic style certainly works through atmosphere and imagery rather than story-telling. It is the reader’s job to compile the story.

But, somehow, I just could not engage with the book at all. I think it was partly the effort that has clearly gone into the writing. Each word has been polished to become so perfect that the overall effect seems to hide the content from the reader (well, from this reader) rather than draw them in. For me, reading this felt like trying to penetrate a shell that would not yield to reveal its contents. That shell is undoubtedly beautiful, but I feel I am only admiring the exterior, not the heart, which, for a book so personal and intense seems self-defeating. Part of the problem I had is that the book is framed as a letter from the narrator to his mother. But it is made clear early on that the mother is illiterate, so we know from the outset that this is just a framing device to allow the author to give voice to his emotions. We know he is writing into a void, and so, it seems does he. I also have to acknowledge (trigger warning coming) that there is a scene fairly early on in the book that features gruesome animal cruelty which really upset me and made me hesitant to pick the book up again for a while and then very nervous as I was reading in case something similar should happen again. That’s a personal reaction as I am not good at dealing with animal cruelty in a book, but this is about my experience of the book so it has to include my personal view.

My thanks to Random House UK for making a copy of this novel available to me via NetGalley. I’m sorry I did not appreciate it more because I thought it was going to be a top read of 2019 for me and I ended up disappointed. I would give the book 3 stars but the animal cruelty really got under my skin and detrimentally affected my experience of the book.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book and it's pretty impossible to review since it strikes me as someone's very own work of art, entirely subjective and not put out into the world for my "entertainment".

The prose is, as you might expect from an award-winning poet, lyrical and beautiful. If you like poetry or this kind of writing, this book could well be for you. This is also a book that is challenging and I sometimes had to read sections over again to decide what they meant to me.

This is billed as a letter to the protagonist's mother although, in reality, it doesn't read like a letter at all. At times, I found the essay-like qualities a little distracting and the references to critical theory stuck out for me, in particular.

If you are looking for something that will make you think, takes you outside your reading comfort zone and packs an emotional punch, this may be up your street!

This is ridiculously well written. In the form a letter when in reality it's a series of vignette style memories.

Artful enough to be challenging and beautiful, but Accessible and grounded this is such an achievement and is stunningly well done.

A pleasure and an emotional rollercoaster to read.

Ocean Vuong is an award winning poet – already winner of the UK’s most presitigious poetry prize – the T.S. Eliot Prize for his debut poetry collection “Night Sky With Exit Wounds” and I think a contender to add a novel prize (perhaps the Booker) for this his debut novel.

This is a novel I think best regarded via the different lenses that Vuong brings to his writing and which give the novel its very distinct feel.

The first is covered well in a 2017 literary hub interview (https://lithub.com/ocean-vuong-interrogating-the-canon-and-literally-riding-a-bicycle-with-no-hands/) which serves as an excellent summary of the fissured, fragmentary nature of the writing, of its examination of Western values (and particulary the American dream) and Western literature (and in particular the Great American Novel) filtered through an Asian immigrant viewpoint

"I’m writing a novel composed of woven inter-genre fragments. To me, a book made entirely out of unbridged fractures feels most faithful to the physical and psychological displacement I experience as a human being. I’m interested in a novel that consciously rejects the notion that something has to be whole in order to tell a complete story. I also want to interrogate the arbitrary measurements of a “successful” literary work, particularly as it relates to canonical Western values. For example, we traditionally privilege congruency and balance in fiction, we want our themes linked, our conflicts “resolved,” and our plots “ironed out.” But when one arrives at the page through colonized, plundered, and erased histories and diasporas, to write a smooth and cohesive novel is to ultimately write a lie. In a way, I’m curious about a work that rejects its patriarchal predecessors as a way of accepting its fissured self"

The second lens is that of a non-native English speaker – the book continually examines English language and just as commonly English punctuation, plays on words and on the shapes of commas and periods feature heavily. There is for example a deliberately naïve focus on misleading etymology which could not but help remind me of Yiyun Lu’s “Where Reasons End”, compare for example Vuong’s "I know. It’s not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter" to Li’s “Nikolai said. Did you notice time is in the middle of sentimental?”

The third is that of a poet – and I found it very interesting to look at some of the author’s poems and see in them the traces of this novel – for example a good sense of the novel, its themes and approach can I think be drawn from:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57586/on-earth-were-briefly-gorgeous
https://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/notebook-fragments-by-ocean-vuong/
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/oceanvuong/poem-trevor-by-ocean-vuong

(the last of these in particular being heavily reproduced in the novel)

Vuong is already a darling of the literary crowd – but he is I think conscious of the praise he is already receiving and also may well receive with this book – and how readers will likely concentrate on the terrible beauty of his writing and not on the underlying ideas and the worldview that drove it:

"They will want you to succeed, but never more than them. They will write their names on your leash and call you necessary, call you urgent.

They will tell you that to be political is to be merely angry, and therefore artless, depthless, “raw,” and empty. They will speak of the political with embarrassment, as if speaking of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. They will tell you that great writing “breaks free” from the political, thereby “transcending” the barriers of difference, uniting people toward universal truths. They’ll say this is achieved through craft above all. Let’s see how it’s made, they’ll say—as if how something is assembled is alien to the impulse that created it. As if the first chair was hammered into existence without considering the human form. "

Returning to poetry – another of Vuong’s poems is the self-referential

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/someday-ill-love-ocean-vuong

I suspect and hope that for many UK readers that “someday” will be 2019.

I am ambivalent about this book. On the one hand I was touched by the narrator’s need to be heard and understood, his tenderness when describing his relationships with his mother and grandmother, his sympathy for the effect of the trauma they had suffered in Vietnam and the difficulties they faced as immigrants to the US, his interactions with his American ‘grandfather’ and his tentative love affair with Trevor. On the other hand there are some truly gross scenes that had me hastily turning pages to get beyond - I am too old for nightmares. I found the writing patchy, too - soaring, poetic images interspersed with impenetrable passages. A memorable read, but not an entirely easy or enjoyable one.

There are no befitting words to express how beautiful this book is.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is an extension of Ocean Vuong’s award-winning poetry, a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. This debut piece of autofiction is an attempt to reach out and love more.

From the first page, Vuong captivated me with not only his precise, divine prose but also with his ability to invoke such deep emotions. Not a word is wasted, each sentence filled with tender imagery which is an absolute treat for the senses. Much of the story is deeply personal and painful. This book is an immigrant story, a queer story, a coming of age story. It asks so many questions: what does it mean to be free? What does it mean to love? There are questions surrounding addiction, violence and trauma. Vuong fixates on the minutiae of this complicated thing we call life and guides his readers into a world filled with heartbreak.

I’m a quick reader. I can make my way through chunks of texts in no time at all. However, with this book, I wanted to absorb every word. I wanted to feel every emotion he exposes in a stream of consciousness that exudes a raw honesty. I almost felt that I wasn’t reading a book but witnessing the heart-breaking scenes that he recounts play out before my eyes.

This book is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The structure sails back and forth giving us various snapshots and images of the protagonist’s life and their family’s history. And yet it doesn’t once feel disjointed. His prose is so elegant that there is a fluidity that weaves everything together so perfectly.

This is literary fiction in its purest form. It is writers with such sheer talent like Ocean Vuong who are crucial for articulating the stories we so need to hear.

I loved this book. Every word is as beautiful as the title and I’m in utter awe.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a raw and lyrical novel, written as a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. It unfolds, non-chronologically, the story not only of a man in his twenties looking back at growing up, but of his mother and grandmother, of a family who came to America from Vietnam, and of trauma travelling across time and generations. The narrator tells, through the letter form, parts of his life that his mother didn't know about, particularly his relationship with Trevor which was marred with addiction and the realities of life.

Vuong's move to prose in this, his first novel, bears deep traces of his poetry, with the same powerful use of imagery and words that leave an imprint on the reader. The style helps the structure—which moves across time and brings flashbacks into accounts of particular scenes—to flow, and recurring images leave a memorable impression. Powerful and raw topics—race, class, sexuality, violence, opioid addition, death—are explored in a way that is both immediate and poetic.

This is a novel about unfolding your story and getting the chance to tell it as it is. Fans of Vuong's poetry will enjoy the lyrical prose and the way he weaves a kind of narrative out of the letter format, and just the title hints at the poetic nature of the novel. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a powerful book people will be talking about, and rightly so.

I know that I’ll probably be part of the minority here, but this book did not blow me away as I though it would.
On earth we’re briefly gorgeous is a heartfelt novel recollecting the story of an American-Vietnamese family which spans for three generations. The story is told from the younger family member’s perspective, the son. He writes this long letter to his illiterate mother detailing all that happened throughout his life and also to his mother and grandmother. I didn’t know Ocean Voung as a poet so I cannot do a comparison between his prose and his poetry. But I can say that his prose feels like some kind of stream of consciousness, there’s a lot of back and forth and also some random scenes.
The emotions are raw and real. For some aspects and for some people they will also probably be deeply relatable.
I think in the end my problem was his narrative. The words used were beautiful but all the back and forth didn’t make me really connect to the characters.

4.5 rounded up

I'm finding it hard to summarise my thoughts on Ocean Vuong's debut novel, perhaps because it's about so many things. I guess if I was pressed to describe On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous I'd say it's a novel about identity, love, race, language and being human.

Written as a letter to his mother who is unable read, the novel doesn't have a cohesive plot as such. Instead we learn about those closest to Vuong and his relationship with them - including an ex, Trevor; his grandmother; grandfather and, of course, his mother - but while learning about all these important figures in the story of his life we learn so much about the ups and downs and beauty and pain of life itself.

Luminous and unforgettable. Now I've got to go and reread his poetry...

Ocean Vuong is first & foremost a poet and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is his literary debut (he also has a poem by the same title). It’s not a novel novel, though, not in this very Western sense we’re all used to. There are no prominent arcs or villains, or any ascending tension. It’s described as a letter from a son to his mother & that’s how it reads, but you could also call it a memoir and not be too far off the mark.

The book is divided intro three sections, none of them with titles, apart from simple Roman numbers. But their themes are obvious nonetheless (being an immigrant in the US, being gay, dying) and they're overflowing with emotions. You can’t really forget that Vuong is a poet, with how beautifully crafted this novel is. He doesn’t often name things, instead lets himself be vague with metaphors & trusts the reader will understand what he’s getting at anyway. The whole experience is a lot like reading a poem, but this isn’t just a novel in verse & it’s not just a letter, either. It blurs the lines and it does it without you even noticing.

Just like everything Vuong published so far, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is very raw, visceral even and vicious at times. But all the feelings (pain) it evokes ring true. That’s the real strength of Vuong’s novel: the honesty evident not only in the emotions it brings to life, but in the life itself that it describes; all the ups-and-downs, all the ugly details, all the not-poetry-like details. There’s no shying away from the mundanity of life here, from parts the fairy tales (and porn) omit.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is about the immigrant experience and the relationship between a mother and a son.

A book which manages to be both raw and polished, ultimately I think this is an exploration of self and all the myriad factors that combine to create an individual. The narrator has a complicated inheritance that leads back to Vietnam in the 1960s, and he suffers for racial reasons in America as well as from the overhang of war which has never left his grandmother and mother.

The second part of the story revolves around a delicate love affair, one haunted by its own troubles grounded in addiction.

The prose can be luminous in places, over-written in others (on trainers with lights in their soles: 'the world's smallest ambulances, going nowhere' - yuk!) The strength, for me, is the fragile, anxious atmosphere, where violence is always just about to explode, even in places that should be safe, that are, somehow, simultaneously, loving.

As is often the case with these literary, fragmented novels, as much is said via the silences, breaks and interstices as in the text itself. A haunting read.