Book Review

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Name: On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous 
Author: Ocean Vuong
Genre: fiction/ Epistolary novel/ memoir
Length: 180 pages
Performance: 3/5

The book is writer’s (Ocean Vuong) first attempt in prose as he has written a couple of poems prior to it. The story lies in between 180 pages in form of a letter written by a son to his unlettered mother. 

The book contains stories of all the main characters in bits and pieces. To start with Lan (protagonist’s grandmother) eloped from her wedding just to marry a man thrice elder to her and eventually ended up being a prostitute in Vietnam war.  Rose (his mother) is a mixed breed born to Lan and an American guy, had an ardous life working in factories and nail salons. She suffered from PTSD ( posttraumatic stress disorder) after Vietnam war.

Little dog (protagonist, as named by his grandmother Lan) was born in Saigon but after the Vietnam War immigrated to US and lived in Hartford. From childhood he suffered physical abuse at the hands of his mother. His respite came in the form of wonderful stories and appetizing meals by Lan. He started to work in tobacco fields early in age and befriended a co worker of his age,Trevor who also happened to be his gay partner. In his company, he experienced drugs and some vivid moments of sexual encounters. 

The book deals with themes of homophobia, prejudice of being a settler, homosexuality, coping with an abusive single parent (mother) drug abuse, death, war and what not. In my opinion, the narration of each character’s story is engaging and one really enjoys the writer’s effortless lyrical style of writing. But I lost my interest so many times that it took me quite long and multiple sittings to finish a hundred and eighty pages long book because of multiple styles writer acquired in making his book a unique piece of marvel. 

By the way, over one million copies were sold over the globe that’s how successful the book was. But in my opinion, the book is crammed with an overdose of his philosophical insights about life, language etc, especially his pleasure encounters with Trevor were put so much into detail that it felt gross and at times I found his writing too vague to relate to.

The book is not a flowy read and one needs to take it in little by little to get going. Ocean Vuong was born on 14th October 1988. A Vietnamese American writer, poet and a professor, currently teaching Creative Writing at NYU. He has bagged a Whiting Award already and received MacArthur Grant.