PLOT: 4/5 CHARACTERS: 4.5/5 WRITING: 3.5/5 OVERALL: 3.5/5
“Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”
– Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
A little introduction
Thanks to Penguin India, I had a chance to read this delicate masterpiece of a book that is original and flows like poetry itself. Coming from the Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, the book is his debut novel written in epistolary format i.e., the entire story is narrated in the form of a letter from a son to his mother.
Nominated in the best debut novel of 2019 and the best fiction of 2019 categories of the Goodreads Choice Awards, it also made it to the longlist of the National Book Award for Fiction in the year 2019. Further, the book is also set to be adapted into a movie under the creative banner of the Oscar-nominated documentary director Bing Liu.
The plot
How do you speak to the one whom you love so much? How do you communicate when you have so much to say and yet somewhere deep down you hope that the other person never gets your message? The answer is simple. You write a letter; a letter to a mother who cannot read.
A long letter that captures the essence of your story but also the story of three generations of your family, a letter that spans the entire vastness of Vietnam and America, and shows us the best and worst of both. A letter that sums up the struggle of your life, your love for your mother, but also your resentment.
In On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Little Dog writes a letter in English to his uneducated Vietnamese mother at a time when he is in his late twenties. He documents the history of his family that begins much before he was born, with the story of his grandmother Lan.
Like many Vietnamese families of that era, their story too is rooted in war. It starts with the war and it is the war that dictates what eventually becomes of them.
His grandmother Lan escapes an unhappy marriage, married as she was to a man twice her age. She leaves everything behind only to survive in a world she is not equipped for, and ends up becoming a prostitute. It is the period of the Vietnam War and she does what she has to survive. She is already four months pregnant when she meets her future husband, an American soldier.
This baby is none but Little Dog’s mother Rose, born of a Vietnamese mother and another American soldier. She grows up illiterate because her school was bombed during the napalm raids, and she suffers from distress and anxiety resulting in a trauma that will haunt her for the rest of her life.
This is the story of Lan, Rose, and Little Dog. Shaped by the conflict between two countries and shaped by race, identity, and gender roles.
The writing
The writing is beautiful, there is no doubt about that. But this isn’t a book for everyone. It’s a book that will appeal to those who can maneuver their way through its narrative and language which often comes in crests and troughs. It is a book for those who can submit to a narrative that is non-linear and complex, more so because the story is told as it is remembered – in spurts of memories that come quickly and aimlessly.
The novel is said to be based on the author’s own life and it is not hard to imagine that. The emotions and passion run deep, often seeping through the pages and lodging themselves into the reader’s imagination.
Agreed that the writing can be sometimes unnecessarily complicated, too descriptive, and hazy, making it difficult to figure out the what’s what of it. It’s foggy and murky and confusing at many times, but it’s also deeply poetic, and maybe it is purposefully written in a certain way.
Themes
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous explores the complicated relationship between a mother and a son. The son undoubtedly loves the mother, but this childhood doesn’t come across as an easy one. The mother is described as abusive, suffering from years of trauma that continue to haunt her past and present.
It also delves into the tragedy that is war, and how its ugly effects can be felt even decades later, often entangling the lives of multiple generations at a stretch. The story also describes what it is to be gay and an immigrant in America, someone who is already on the periphery, trying hard to find his place in this confused complicated world.
At last, it is a running social commentary on everything that is wrong with contemporary America – from addiction to dysfunctional families to unnecessary violence to mental health.
Other things
One of the most beautiful things about this book is its beautiful quotes, some of which I am listing below.
“Sometimes you are erased before you are given the choice of stating who you are.”
“I sit, with all my theories, metaphors, and equations, Shakespeare and Milton, Barthes, Du Fu, and Homer, masters of death who can’t, at last, teach me how to touch my dead.”
“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?
I miss you more than I remember you.”
“Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness. I want to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and say, ‘it’s been an honor to serve my country.”
“Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you’d know it’s a flood.”
In the end, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a book that is complex yet beautiful, confusing yet profound, navigating deep territories of the inner mind, where very few authors seldom attempt to go.
Can’t wait to read it? Buy your copy of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
