On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

by Ocean Vuong

**THE SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
**WINNER OF THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARD 2020**
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2020**

Brilliant, heart-breaking, tender, and highly original – poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a sweeping and shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born – a history whose epicentre is rooted in Vietnam – and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to the American moment, immersed as it is in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

**A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD 2020**

‘This romantic, lusciously written debut lingers over kisses’ The Times

‘So very full of beauty and power. Also, grace’ Tommy Orange, Observer

‘A magical synthesis of memoir, fiction and poetry’ Joyce Carol Oates, TLS

• ISBN10: 1787331504
• ISBN13: 9781787331501
• Publish Date: 20 June 2019 (first published 4 June 2019)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 8 April 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Imprint: Jonathan Cape Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[winterlily]

A really interesting read! Very beautiful writing, often more like poetry than prose however. Though the plot isn’t particularly active (which I’ve heard many complaints about) I feel like there’s enough interweaving and exploration going on to keep it interesting and touching

[Bianca]

It's true that, in Vietnamese, we rarely say I love you, and when we do, it is almost always in English. Care and love, for us, are pronounced clearest through service: plucking white hairs, pressing yourself on your son to absorb a plane's turbulence and, therefore, his fear. Or now—as Lan called to me, "Little Dog, get over here and help me help your mother." And we knelt on each side of you, rolling out the hardened cords in your upper arms, then down to your wrists, your fingers. For a moment almost too brief to matter, this made sense—that three people on the floor connected to each other by touch, made something like the word family.

Beautiful prose, no doubt. But for a personal story, I felt like the writing was way too flashy. Maybe it’s my personal preference, but I like books that can be raw and vulnerable without having to use so much grandeur in its prose. And it just felt really disjointed and felt like a compilation of short stories instead of a novel. I really tried to like this and give it more stars, but I just didn’t have the heart to. I liked some passages, but the book as a whole honestly didn’t really move me.

[jamiereadthis]

Some books aren’t so much reading as they are listening to what the author is putting on the page. This was gorgeous and painful and gorgeous.