I’m not sure how to put my feelings into words—which is ironic, because Ocean Vuong does it so effortlessly. This book is like a slow, aching melody that lingers long after the last note. Also, can we talk about that title? Pure poetry.It’s beautiful, it’s brutal, just like the rest of the book and it’s one of those stories that settles deep in your bones.

The novel follows Hai, a 19-year-old college dropout drowning in grief and addiction, who’s literally on the edge of a bridge when he meets Grazina, an elderly widow with dementia. Their connection is unexpected, messy, and so deeply human it hurts. Grazina shouts at him from across the river, and just like that, their lives intertwine. What follows is a story about survival, chosen family, and the quiet, stubborn act of caring for someone when the world feels like it’s crumbling.

Vuong’s writing is, unsurprisingly, stunning. Every sentence feels deliberate, like it’s been carved out of something raw and real. But what got me the most was how he captures the small, fleeting moments, the way Hai and Grazina’s bond forms in the cracks of their brokenness, how a shared silence can say more than words ever could. There’s no grand, dramatic rescue here, just two people figuring out how to keep going, one day at a time.

And then there’s the diner where Hai works, which becomes its own little universe. His coworkers, misfits, survivors, people clinging to the edges of society are so vividly drawn, they feel like people you’ve known forever.

I won’t lie, this isn’t a light read. It’s heavy in the way life is heavy: full of loss, memory, and the weight of what we carry. But it’s also tender, funny in unexpected places, and ultimately hopeful. It’s the kind of book that makes you pause, stare at the ceiling, and just feel for a while.

The Emperor of Gladness is a masterpiece, and I’ll be thinking about it for a long, long time.Read it slowly. Let it wreck you. Then read it again.



5/5 stars.

The Emperor of Gladness book did not disappoint. This author takes you on a journey, exploring themes of community, the need to belong, and examining memories. Ocean Vuong, as an author, I feel, makes the reader reflect on their own lives. I highly recommend this author.

Ocean Vuong’s novel is a thematically rich and emotionally resonant work. At its heart, it is a study of human connection set against the harsh backdrop of late capitalism, enforced precarity, and the fading promise of the American dream. Vuong critiques systems of labor, consumption, and empire not through polemic, but by focusing on the lives of those written out of mainstream narratives: gig economy workers in fast food chains, the elderly and disabled, poor immigrants, and drug users. These are people enlisted to uphold a gleaming world that ultimately denies them a place in it.

What makes the novel compelling is Vuong’s ability to illuminate the beauty that emerges even within systems designed to render people disposable. Though the bonds between his characters are often brief and fragile, they form vital spaces of friendship, intimacy, and found family. In these moments, Vuong folds the margins into the center, reminding us of who and what we sacrifice in our relentless chase for progress and growth.

Memory and war loom large over the characters’ lives, adding layers of psychological and historical depth. Grazina, an elderly woman suffering from dementia, slips in and out of a past shaped by her traumatic youth. Hai, navigating the present-day realities of East Gladness—a forgotten town ravaged by poverty and drugs—fights his own quiet war of survival. His cousin, Sony, turns to the memorialization of a different, more distant war as a form of escape and meaning-making. These personal and collective histories haunt the characters, shaping how they relate to each other and to the world around them.

Amidst the ruins—social, economic, emotional—Vuong’s writing insists on attention: attention to small acts of care, to fragile solidarities, and to the strength that can emerge from connection, however fleeting. In doing so, the novel offers not resolution, but recognition—and that, Vuong suggests, may be enough to keep going.

A beautiful book. So touching and one that will stay with me. I’m kind of speechless in terms of what to write except to say that you should read this book. The friendships and camaraderie are so powerful and the imagery is so complete I felt transported.

Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese-American award winning poet (his individual poems have won a variety of prizes and his collection “Night Sky With Exit Wounds” won the UK’s most prestigious poetry prize – the TS Eliot), essayist and novelist – with his debut novel “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” being shortlisted for both the Dublin International Literary Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize).

That novel, written in the style of a letter from a son to his illiterate mother, drew heavily on his poetry – with a fissured and fragmentary style which a weight on each sentence which at times veered into overwriting in the longer form, although overall I was impressed with the beauty of his writing.

This his second novel is much more conventional and substantive in form – telling the story of both:
An unlikely but powerful friendship between a young and troubled man Hai (a Vietnamese American) and an elderly woman Grazina (originally from Lithuania which she fled in the dying says of World War Ii) suffering from severe dementia with who he lives in return for caring for her – a friendship built on a mutual sense of loneliness and of bring somewhat on the economic and social fringes of society.

What the author has called not a nuclear family (as an aside families in this novel are fissured and troubled – Grazina’s family don’t visit and despite living in the same town as his mother Hai does not visit her and allows her to assume he is at college) but a “circumstantial family” – a group of workers in a fast food restaurant (albeit one with pretensions to be being something of a refuge for people to experience home-style comfort food every day) where Hai ends up working alongside his autistic cousin Sony (whose Mum is in jail). And the group includes some quirky characters (all of who I think are based on people Vuong knew but lost to the opioid and related crises) which include a woman obsessed with lizard overlord conspiracies and a restaurant manager set on a wrestling career (and who sings her own death metal entrance songs)

Returning to the author’s essay writing – a 2015 essay in the Adroit journal is namechecked at the end of the book and makes it clear that much of the book (and in particular the Hai/Grazina relationship - not just in outline but in many of its smaller observational parts) is based very heavily on Vuong’s own experience - albeit when in New York studying as a poet rather than as with his narrator – when on the verge of committing suicide having dropped out of college after his friend (and we assume first lover) died of drug misuse, and then instead of going back to a different college as his mother believes having checked into a halfway house but then intending to end it when he leaves there (deciding he cannot go home) only to be literally talked down from the bridge by Grazina who then proposes their arrangement.

The novel seems very wholesome – which is much more than can be said about the food at the restaurant which confirms every prejudice I hold about the American diet.

It is also message heavy: for example, around the bonds in the restaurant which are particularly forged when Sony decides to visit the scene of his father’s death, about the importance of a life even when the person who lived it can no longer remember it and a concentration on the marginalised

It also impressively and consciously avoids any kind of transformative or rags to riches narrative – many seeming set piece scenes don’t end the way they would in say a Hollywood film - a classic example of this is the restaurant manager’s long-awaited but ultimately anti-climatical wrestling debut, another the key scene when Sony finds the site of his father’s death Instead the conscious focus is on characters whose achievement is simply to carry on.

Overall while perhaps of less self-consciously literary merit than his debut – Vuong’s poetic and sometimes portentous prose is still present but less obviously do - I think this novel may prove to be more widely popular with readers – and a Booker longlisting is not I think to be unexpected (although further progress would surprise me).

A lyrical masterpiece of a novel from Ocean Vuong yet again. Ocean's poetical style really shows all the way through in this novel, helping to tell what is at heart a novel with layers upon layers of sadness with such beauty that the glimmers of light somehow transform it into something positive.

I hold a special place in my heart for this style of writing and it doesn't come around often. I'll be recommending it at every possible opportunity and likely gifting it to friends too.

Hai has detonated his life in a haze of tragedy and prescription drugs. Hiding out from his mother he ends up living with an elderly woman whose past is catching up with her and working with his civil war obsessed cousin in a low rent restaurant. Hai is mourning his life and accidentally building a strange new family of waifs and strays along the way.

This is beautiful and strange. Sad and funny, devastating and quietly celebratory. I loved it.

The Emperor of Gladness is Ocean Vuong’s new novel, a story about a young Vietnamese American man whose chance meeting with a elderly Lithuanian woman changes both their and others’ lives. Hai is a college dropout standing on a bridge ready to jump, until Grazina stops him. She’s a widow who lives alone and invites him to live with her. Hai gets a job at the local fast food restaurant his cousin works at and helps Grazina to remember to take her medication, and she offers him another chance to live.

I love Vuong’s poetry and his previous novel for their lyrical style, but I really enjoyed how The Emperor of Gladness combines a poetic style with compelling characters and their quirks. I wasn’t expecting the crew of his colleagues but they really stand out in the novel, showing what people working in the service industry deal with and the importance of camaraderie and found family to get through things. The more fantastical elements of the novel come through Grazina’s illness, as she forgets who and where she is and believes herself back in Europe, and these parts are sad but again explore the resilience of people.

Hai himself has a bittersweet narrative of addiction, grief, and disappointment, lying to his mother about his life, and he doesn’t get a simple happy story, but instead a complex messy one that doesn’t tie up nicely even as others’ do. Vuong has created another beautifully written book, one that tells a powerful small town America story that sticks with you.

Hope and despair, the family we choose and make ours, loneliness and the failure of society. Beautifully written and haunting in a melancholy way.

Ocean Vuong returns with a searing and tender exploration of love, memory, and survival in The Emperor of Gladness, a haunting book set in the post-industrial quietude of East Gladness, Connecticut. At its centre is Hai, a nineteen-year-old teetering on the edge of despair, and Grazina, an elderly widow battling dementia. Their chance encounter on a rain-swept bridge unspools into a deeply affecting story of intergenerational friendship and unexpected healing.

Hai, adrift in the aftermath of personal loss and a community buckling under the weight of poverty and addiction, finds both purpose and painful reflection in caring for Grazina. In her fractured memories and confusion, she becomes an unlikely mirror to Hai’s own unresolved grief. Their bond offers both characters – and the reader – a glimpse at what it means to keep living, even when every reason not to mounts.

Vuong’s signature style is here in full bloom: lyrical, daring, and profoundly emotional. His sentences are crafted with the care of a poet, but they never feel indulgent. The book moves like memory itself – not always linear, but full of aching clarity and resonance. There’s a quiet revolution in Vuong’s pages: a challenge to how we view care, who gets to be remembered, and the small mercies that carry us through.

With echoes of war and the legacies it leaves behind, Vuong weaves personal and collective trauma into something deeply human and redemptive. The Emperor of Gladness is not simply a story about saving or being saved, but about the gentle art of staying – of choosing connection, even in the ruins.

This is a masterwork of compassion and complexity. A book to sit with, to feel deeply, and to return to.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

The Emperor of Gladness is the first book I’ve read by Ocean Vuong. In no way did I expect what I found within this novel. It is stunningly crafted both in the use of language and the use of characters to transform one another.

We meet 19-year-old Hai. He’s trapped in lies, grief, and addiction. On the night he decides to end it all, he meets Grazina, an 82-year-old widow with dementia. What follows is the story of two people, both immigrants, with vast differences in age and culture. Yet it is a bond that sustains them both as Hai becomes Grazina’s carer.

Hai eventually gets a job at a fast food-type outlet. His coworkers are brilliantly captured by Vuong. These are the people who have been pushed to the edges of society, working-class people, truly marginalised yet with heart and compassion for one another. Through each other they find their sense of worth.

The Emperor of Gladness isn’t a novel to be read quickly. It’s to be lingered over and read slowly, as Ocean Vuong understands the power of words to transform the reader.

Thank you to Random House UK, Vintage Books, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

While I loved many of the characters and was fond of the plot, I found that I didn't really enjoy the reading experience overall.

Ocean Vuong has, to this day, one of the most powerful and evocative writing styles I have ever read - their words just seem to hit me in my soul. This new title is just as stunning. I would give it 6 stars if I could

The unlikely bond between two souls who have had their fair share of difficulties.
Hai and Grazina show us what hurting and survival mean.
Well written and great example of literature.

i love ocean vuong's works, i have read everything he has written and i don't even know how i love every single one of them and like no other, this too is an instant 5 star.
the plot tackles so many heavy topic but the story flows like water, and it flows you with it, and i am really grateful zadie smith for encouraging him to write it.

Ocean Vuong's latest novel, The Emperor of Gladness is much anticipated and already much lauded in advance praise. Vuong is a genuine talent, and reading this you get the real sense of a novelist flexing his literary muscles, widening his scope beyond the intimate focus which made up his debut, 2019's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.

Hai is a 19 year old, a drop-out drug addict in the town of East Gladness. He moves in with Grazina, an elderly Lithuanian immigrant with dementia, and so begins a reflective tale that discusses many themes, to create a novel that feels both broad and focussed. Vuong is a beautiful writer - he is also a published poet - and there is a rich texture to the language.

I took my time with this novel - it is one to read slowly - and I became fully engaged with life in East Gladness - and felt somewhat bereft when the novel had finished. This fine novel will continue to be lauded, I'm sure, and is the perfect novel for book clubs etc to discuss and tease out the themes of.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

3.5 rounded up

What happens when you escape a war-torn country only to find yourself in another, one that does not care if you live or die, that seems determined to suck away your life force? This is one of the central themes explored in Vuong’s second novel which follows Hai, a 19 year old college dropout struggling with opiate addiction. He moves in with elderly Grazina, a Lithuanian immigrant with dementia, acting as her carer in exchange for a place to live.

Hai gets a job at Homemarket, (btw this is how I found out Boston Market went out of business?? RIP) a fast-casual chain restaurant staffed by a diverse cast of characters including his autistic cousin Sony.

Hai is truly adrift, obliterated by grief and shame, numbing himself with pills. He spends the book floating through life, making poignant observations along the way but unable to find a way to be okay.

War is ever-present, from Hai and Grazina’s backgrounds, Sony’s obsession with the Civil war, and the war in Afghanistan fueled by poor young bodies that get spat back out when the military industrial complex no longer has use for them.

This is not an easy read in a lot of ways, the prose beautiful but dense and there is a bleakness that brief moments of light never manage to alleviate. At times it felt like there was too much going on. Certain threads didn’t feel as developed as others, such as the cold murder case and the day spent at a slaughterhouse.

I still felt very moved by the impoverished New England setting, the industrial decay contrasted with the beauty of the natural world. Hai’s connection to Grazina, Sony and his co-workers at Homemarket all felt lifelike and dimensional. This is a novel about the invisible; poor immigrants, food service workers, the disabled, and the elderly, and the constant low-level violence of poverty that slowly grinds them down.

It’s not a page-turner in the traditional sense, but the depth of the ideas makes it worth sticking with. You’ll come away with more questions than answers, in the best way. Great for book clubs or slow, deliberate reading.

Much like Vuong's debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, this book is beautifully written. The words flow off the page and are lyrical and mesmerising. However, it is very slow paced and at times felt quite difficult to digest and read as it is very word heavy if that makes any sense. Vuong is such a talented writer, every sentence is quotable and poetic and I know that this book will be an instant classic and an instant favourite for so many people. For me personally, whilst I adored the writing, it was a very slow burn and kind of dragged on a bit. This is definitely a book that you need to sit with and take your time to read.

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong is an ambitious and wide in scope novel centered on human connections, second chances and resilience.