On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

A Novel

By: Ocean Vuong

Narrated by: Ocean Vuong

Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

An instant New York Times Best Seller! 

Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award

Shortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction! 

Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more.

“A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post) 

Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and 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 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter 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 our American moment, immersed as we are 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. 

Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, Time, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and more!

©2019 Ocean Vuong (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Vuong writes about the yearning for connection that afflicts immigrants. But ‘ocean’ also describes the distinctive way Vuong writes: His words are liquid, flowing, rolling, teasing, mighty and overpowering. When Vuong’s mother gave him the oh-so-apt name of Ocean, she inadvertently called into being a writer whose language some of us readers could happily drown in.... Like so many immigrant writers before him, Vuong has taken the English he acquired with difficulty and not only made it his own - he’s made it better.” (Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air)

“In order to survive, Little Dog has to receive and reject another kind of violence, too: he must see his mother through the American eyes that scan her for weakness and incompetence and, at best, disregard her, the way that evil spirits might ignore a child named for a little dog. There is a staggering tenderness in the way that Little Dog holds all of this within himself, absorbing it and refusing to pass it on. Reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous can feel like watching an act of endurance art, or a slow, strange piece of magic in which bones become sonatas, to borrow one of Vuong’s metaphors.” (Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker)

“A bruised, breathtaking love letter never meant to be sent. A powerful testimony to magic and loss. A marvel.” (Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf)

“This book - gorgeous is right there in the title - finds incredible, aching beauty in the deep observation of love in many forms. Ocean Vuong's debut novel contains all the power of his poetry, and I finished the book knowing that we are seeing only the very beginning of his truly magnificent talent.” (Emma Straub, author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers)  

Beautifully written, but painful.

Beautifully written, but so depressing. Warning: a description of terrible animal torture that makes the whole book worth skipping. Traumatizing. Not recommended.

I never write reviews

I never (and I mean never) write reviews, but Vuong's new memoir is so remarkable that I couldn't help myself. This book is as moving and profound as his earlier collections, yet he's managed to blend poetic form and traditional narrative in a way so original and beautiful that you can't help but be held so still by his words.

Ocean Vuong Should Not Narrate His Books

The author should not narrate his books. He writes beautifully and while his voice maybe suitable for reading poetry, he speaks in such a monotone, with no variation or inflection, that I found it impossible to listen to the book. What a shame!

Transforming Shrapnel into Art

Ocean Vuong, a Vietnamese-American writer, has made “art out of the shrapnel” of the Vietnam War.

Originally, the author spoke little English in the American city of Hartford. A “yellow” little boy, he tells us, he pieces together a humble life reflecting on how his different appearance matches a different sexual desire. This wanting and longing informs a large portion of the middle section of the book.

His writing has a fragile tenacity: the slightest observation is rendered palpable and visceral by his poetic skill which comes at you from so many angles that it is like a gentle assault. An assault that slaps your senses into the power of language to create beauty and reflect on the essential nature of our brief lives.

This epistolary novel, a letter to his mother, reflects on his early insecurities, inchoate understanding of his wanting another, the loss of his protective but schizophrenic maternal grandmother, and his mother’s PTSD whose main symptom is her violence against him.

There are so many metaphors that provoke reverie, but one moment of the novel revolves around the words, “I’m sorry, “ and I almost wept for the powerless among us. Those who are sold prescription pain killers which are addictive only to be blamed for this or those who work too many hours for too little pay. But when one considers death, then powerlessness would include us all. The glorious resolution of this sorrow is to be seen for one brief moment (a life). This gorgeous prose from a brilliant writer affirms dignity in the power of language to transform shrapnel into art. Bravo!

Didn't Finish - Couldn't Take the Audio

Just because the author wants to narrate their own book on audio doesn't mean you should let them. I found it maudlin, faint, cloying, and ultimately book-ruining. Basically the opposite of other great author-narrated books like Florida (Lauren Groff) and Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt). I'll read it instead.

beautiful

will read again and again. language like a tide, cradles and crashes against you. great perspective for writers as well.

Clearly a poet

As a poet, his writing is luminous. As a storyteller, he is more muddled. Individual parts are heartbreakingly beautiful but the arc of story is continuously interrupted and confusing.
His narration is clear but flat almost monotone.

Hmmmm.....

Can a book be too poetic ? So many beautiful sentences that it all runs together and nothing stands out? I’m conflicted. Part of me loves it and part of me thinks it was all just too much.

Beautifully written

Really beautiful writing. The flow is like poetry. The author does a great job with narration.

Important, crushing and beautifully poetic book

This isn’t an easy story. If you want to feel good, you probably should look elsewhere. If the exploration of intersectionality and the often painful ways that gender, sexuality, race and nationality might impact one’s experience of life is interesting to you, this is well worth the read. Mental illness, trauma and drug abuse are all present in this story.

It is difficult to read and it is a crushing and beautifully poetic book.

i found the first third required patience and the narration performance wasn’t my favorite. I would probably prefer to read this than listen to it.