On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: ‘A masterpiece’ – Max Porter

What do you call a book that flows like a river from beginning to end, what do you call one that is painfully beautiful that your heart bleeds everytime you read the word, ‘Ma’ ? ” I don’t know if you’re happy, Ma. I never asked.” “Ma, you once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you’d know it’s a flood.” But my doubt is everywhere, Ma. Ma…. At times, this book feels like a love letter. At times, like a memoir. At times, it feels something more than anything the words I know could describe. It told me how a war never ends, how it continues inside a person long after it is over, It told me how love at it’s best repeat itself, how to love something, at times was to name it after something so worthless that it might be left untouched, how for some people apology was their form of saying hello, how losing a person could make more of us, the living, broken into two. And the list goes on. I don’t remember the last time I cried reading a book. May be it was because Lan reminded me of my grandfather, how for me the greatest love was being asked ‘Did you eat’ when nobody cared and every time, Lan asks “Little Dog, Did you eat”, I felt love in it’s most pure form. I badly want to go back to this book and inhale in all the words, like how could somebody write about people and places with so much beauty that you fall in love even with the pain, how could somebody see something and relate it to something so different. Ocean Vuong is no less than a magician and I am so glad that I decided to buy this one. There is very few pages in this book that I haven’t highlighted. So give it a read, people. Happy Reading.

The novel stands out for its poetic language and emotional honesty rather than a conventional plot. It captures the inherited pain of the Vietnam War, the struggles of working-class immigrant life in America, and the quiet tenderness found in unlikely places. The prose is intimate, often raw, and reflective, blurring the line between poetry and fiction. Overall, it is a haunting and beautiful meditation on language, belonging, and survival—brief in length, but lasting in impact.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous isn’t just a novel — it’s a letter, a memory, a confession. Ocean Vuong’s writing is absolutely stunning. It reads like poetry, each line soaked in emotion and meaning. The way he explores trauma, identity, immigration, queerness, and family is both brutally honest and beautifully delicate. The narrative doesn’t follow a traditional plot structure, which might not be for everyone. It’s more reflective, a stream of memories and feelings rather than clear-cut events. But that’s what makes it powerful — it’s real, like sifting through someone’s soul. I found myself pausing often, not because I was bored, but because a sentence hit too hard or too beautifully. This is a book you feel more than follow. If you’re looking for a fast-paced story, this isn’t it. But if you want something raw, poetic, and emotionally profound, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous will stay with you long after the final page.

Good

Loved the writing

"I'm not telling you a story so much as a shipwreck- the pieces floating, finally legible " This is exactly how the whole book is. This book is a letter by a son to his mother who cannot read. This book talks about war and its effects, immigrants, abuse and racism, drug abuse, life and death. This book is like a soft spoken child who is spitting facts. It's sad to know that all that is described in this book is the truth of the world. And it's so tragically poetic. This book is the picture of the lost "American Dream". But to say the least, the overal composition of the book was too chaotic to be legible. I know it's a wildly popular bookstagram book but I only enjoyed the first half of the book. The later half had me confused over the fact that it did not make any sense where the story was going.

This is the debut novel of Vuong (a Vietnamese and immigrant) published in 2019. It is written as a tribute to his mother - and that is how it is written in form of letters to his mother, which she will never get to read as she doesn’t even know how to read. And as mentioned in the book, as the mother believes in reincarnation, the author hopes that she reads this book sometime in her next life. Writing to his mother and telling her secrets about himself is also more like a “trying to break free” kind of writing. The family here in the novel is a fractured one, with mother and grandmother both suffering from mental illnesses. He is abused by his mentally ill mother and tortured further by his schoolmates. Finally he finds solace in his first love of his life - Trevor, an American teenager, which is lost later due to substance abuse. The language is figurative, so needs patience to read it. The book is filled with lot of information, more like from the memories of the LIttle Dog (protagonist of the book). It is filled with scenes filled with physical abuse, insult, being bullied for being yellow, or white, or queer, or someone who made different choices as against the conventional choices. Like when Little Dog’s grandmother had run away from her arranged marriage, her mother kept saying that there’s no place for women who run away from marriage and she ends up becoming a sex worker. It brings to the reader’s notice war related trauma that goes on for generations, if not healed, the difficulty of being a non - white refugee in the US, the marketing strategies of pharma companies to sell addictive material as pain relief pills, and so forth. The title (for which the book even got my attention in the first place), is so true. That we might not feel the beauty all the time, but there will be those little moment, when we feel beautiful. And that is what the life is worth living for and working hard for - that brief moment of feeling gorgeous.

Quality of the book looks perfect

An extremely powerful narrative of a Vietnamese boy and his relationship with his mother and grandmother living as expatriates in the USA. Also it portrays a coming of age story set in a rural part of America seen with different lenses and the discovery for his first love for a bitterly sad teenage boy. Writing a letter to his illiterate mother, the narrator reveals all the suffering and complexities that their lives carried away and their struggle for mutual understanding living in a new country. This a debut autobiographical novel by the highly-awarded poet Ocean Vuong who gives us a heartbreaking punch of his experience for being a foreigner in America. The narrative is full of poetry in its poignant fabric of his personal life and reminded me of a great Portuguese writer as well: Valter Hugo Mãe. It was a great pleasure to read such a captivating and intense novel.

Style does not sit with me, but then again I am not a native english speaker.

Such a moving book. Could not put it down.

This book is so gorgeously written, the impressionistic language used and the pictures painted are at once horrific, damaging and tender with deep feeling. A love letter to a cherished mother, it explores beginnings and endings from the explosive consequences of the Vietnam War to the broken underbelly of contemporary America. A book to wallow in, to mourn its sadness and enjoy its pleasures, all at the same time.