On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ratings334
Average rating4
10 pages into a book and I'm already crying??
I've had this sitting on my shelf for the past few months. My friend highly praised it and became a fan of his work, so I thought it might be as life-changing for me.
However, I did not expect my eyes to water just from the first page.
I don't know WHAT exactly it is. It's a combination of knowing that it's an extremely vulnerable, heartbreaking book about his complicated relationship with his mom, the Vietnamese immigrant parent x American child aspect (I can 100% relate to), and the fact that his mom will/has passed away. It's the first time a book has made me viscerally cry like this, snot and all, and I had to put it down.
It kept making me think about my own parents and their difficult lives, my future without them, and knowing that I don't have such strong childhood memories with them, or even such strong ones now. Also, I feel like I'm kinda mourning the fact that my parents don't really have hobbies of their own now. It's mostly just housework, Youtube and TV, and it makes me sad that they didn't have as much of a chance to do and be whatever they wanted to be, and there's not much interest now.
I am so upset and MAD this book got me like this just from 10 pages. In the end, I was unable to finish it, too afraid of experiencing the pain and emotions again. It's a tough poetic read, and I didn't end up finishing it. Maybe one day, but I'm not that into poetic writing.
Think the experience was improved by his reading, as I most likely would have quit the written book after the monkey brains scene (though I guess a testament to his quality writing that it made me so nauseated?) I can see why it's winning awards, but I wanted more of a story to hold this shimmering gossamer web of sadness together.
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.
One sentence synopsis... The lyrical coming-of-age story of Little Dog, the son of Vietnamese immigrants to the U.S. .
Read it if you like... reading poetry - the author is a poet and first time novelist. Stylish, yet deeply personal prose, like Joan Didion. .
Further reading... Vuong's prize winning book of poetry, “Night Sky with Exit Wounds”.
the writing is supreme, effortlessly an easy flow, even though at times it might be a bit too flowery, but i doubt that there's anything outgrowing fatigue towards the language. it also managed to explore on several social issues, i.e. the vietnamese history, US social problems, a.k.a. arms, overdose, violence, etc. and most importantly, the handling of grief and losses. for a coming-of-age book it doesn't cheaply treat the topics of abuse and violence in household or romantic relationships, or the intersectionality as both a queer member and a racial minority merely as a tool for recognition and exposure, there's way more layers to build upon than that. most importantly, it is a sort of intricate love between the mother and son, which does not necessarily victimise the son or the mother, yet putting them both on different sides of the same balance, untilted.
My partner read this book and raves about it, and I can see why after reading it. I was a bit lost in the beginning when talking about war and also during the middle where Ocean flaunted his artistic skills, but in all, the book was captivating and a good read. While I may not be the best person to appreciate in fullness the way Ocean writes, I understand why this book has won many awards and why people enjoy his prose so fully.
I wanted so badly to love this book. I've seen rave reviews, I LOVE the title and cover, the synopsis sounded good. But I didn't love it. Honestly, it tried so hard to be beautiful and poignant and literary that it kind of became the opposite. It ended up being torturously slow and descriptive. In the end, I felt like I ~should~ be devastated or overwhelmed with emotion but I was just left lacking any feeling at all. It's like the author tried so hard to sound poetic and beautiful that they forgot there was supposed to be a plot. And it's disappointing because it's not like it's not beautiful writing. It is. It has the potential to be amazing, but unfortunately it was not. And I'm really sad about that. 2.5/5 stars.
Beautiful imagery and diction, though sometimes poetic to the point of being jarring or messing up reading flow. Still, really beautiful—sometimes cutting. I had to prepare myself to be in the headspace to read this because of the heaviness, sometimes.
A beautiful piece of poetry. The long letter of a son to his mother who can't read, the depth of human feeling and one's history. The family history and the impact of immigration and living in an unknown country, the rural America and its pains and trials. Truly a thing of beauty, deeply moving.
I liked it.
Not as much as I thought but I did, and this book was good, very good.
I like how it kinda has a poetic feel to it.
Había partes demasiado fantasiosas y poéticas en las que me perdía un poco pero me ha gustado mucho en general. También me he quedado con varias frases que dice y he llorado como una perra
I can definitely tell this author is a poet. Very pretty writing.
Vietnam book around the world. AND a goodreads choice of the year book!
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. Coming out. Coming of age. Immigrant story. Abusive parent. Opiod abuse. There doesn't seem to be much fresh about the story itself, although the language is beautiful. The author is a poet, after all. Perhaps the most intriguing character in the book for me is Paul, the “grandfather” of the narrator, and even his story is familiar–the well-meaning soldier separated from his Vietnamese love who ends up marrying an American girl back home, leaving the Vietnamese girl to fend for herself.
I did not enjoy the beginning of this book. It felt unnecessarily slow and was tough to get through. Plus the flow felt choppy and there wasn't really a structure to the story for much of the beginning. This book is supposed to be a letter to his mother so of course in the beginning it's going to feel like more of a stream of consciousness that rambles rather a book, but I still felt like a lot of the long rambling felt barely connected to the main subject of the book and therefore was mostly uninteresting. I wasn't interested in these parts of the story and I felt like I had to force myself through them to get to the parts that were actually relevant to what I was reading.
Once I got closer to halfway through though the book picked up a lot better, there was more of a flow to the story, and it seemed to have an actual direction it was headed in. I then felt drawn in and became more invested in the story.
Overall a good book, very lyrical and I like the word choice and overall message of the story.
Definitely for keeping. This book is the kind that you need to sit with. There were times when I just had to pause and think on the words and write my own thoughts. There were times when he is able to articulate life in a way I haven't thought of that it just took me by surprise. I definitely took my time reading this book because I needed the words to sit with me. For me to turn a description in many ways and see what he sees. Reminds me of a pollock painting, you look at it as a whole and it's a complicated web and you look at each fragment of text closely and it's just as complicated and together, it makes for a beautiful read.
In its totality, this book is about vulnerability. By the very nature of how it was written, a son writing a letter to his mother who might never be able to read it, detailing his life, stories he could never communicate in the hopes of being able to share it to her someday. How he slowly accepts vulnerability as a part of his beauty and how the same fragility and its acceptance applies to our lives and how to see the beauty in it.
This is not a very plot driven book and if you read it expecting it will lay out answers for you, you will be disappointed. This is a book, that when read, will make you ask more questions to yourself.
Do not read this book expecting a linear plotline, that chapter one will make chapter 4 make sense somehow and all the dots will get connected and it will give you a grand conclusion. It's not that kind of book. Read this book like how you live in the present, not thinking about what came before and not anticipating what comes after and you will enjoy it for what it is.
Ocean Vuong has a way of using words that conjure such vivid images for me - truly mesmerizing
I don't know how to review this. It was sad, poetic, tragic, beautiful and heart wrenching all at once. The stories, the way they were written and narrated, the characters, they were all...just what they were intended to be.
Throughout the whole book, I wished I knew what was real and what was fiction. I wondered after reading something sad that did the author himself go through this? Which parts were created, which were taken straight from his life. However, I did not cry despite how sad it was except for one line that triggered my tears. But I feel that I was already in my feels so the line just provoked my tear sockets.
I am glad I came across this and read it.
Gorgeous. A bit thematically dense for me to get everything the first time around, so it might be worth a reread. Several passages made me ugly cry.