Book Review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

I had a hard time figuring out how I felt about this book. Perhaps because I read this during a particularly busy time in my life and was distracted, but it might also be because this book exists in that space where there’s a lot of technical skill, but I felt like something undefinable is missing. So like I do whenever I sit down to write a book review, I went back and reviewed my annotations to see what struck me while I was reading. And it’s obvious this was written by a poet, because there were some striking passages of pure literary beauty. But at the same time, there were also passages that were trying too hard to be poetry and lost all meaning. I’ll include some of my favorite poetic snippets at the end of this review, since they were really the best part of the novel and genuinely strong.

But when I revisited my annotations, I was still confused, because my general impression of the novel was not as strong as those snippets. My opinion of the novel only clarified when I read these two reviews off of goodreads and realized they put my thoughts into words:

“reading this felt like trying to penetrate a shell that would not yield to reveal its contents. That shell is undoubtedly beautiful, but I feel I am only admiring the exterior, not the heart, which, for a book so personal and intense seems self-defeating.” (Neil George from Goodreads)

“This book is beautifully written but ultimately a hollow read. The author’s attention to writing flowery prose seems to have come at the expense of creating a compelling story. The story is told in fragments that never really come together to form a coherent narrative.” (John Mauro from Goodreads)

The meat of the novel was missing. I wanted to delve deeper into his relationships with his mother and grandmother, since those were definitely the most interesting and the most personal of the novel. I was not surprised to hear that Vuong totally made up Trevor’s character rather than being inspired by an actual person, because that relationship wasn’t as deep and descriptive as his relationships with his family.

But I do want to read more of Vuong’s poetry, because I think short form is most likely where he excels, though this wasn’t a bad novel by any means.

Snippets:

“Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.”

“To love something, then, is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched—and alive.”

“from her faceless youth only to name herself after a flower that opens like something torn apart.”

“Even when I know something to be true as bone I fear the knowledge will dissolve, will not, despite my writing it, stay real.”

“Your hands are hideous—and I hate everything that made them that way. I hate how they are the wreck and reckoning of a dream.”

“the small bones along your spine, a row of ellipses no silence translates.”

“I’m broken in two, the message said. In two, it was the only thought I could keep, sitting in my seat, how losing a person could make more of us, the living, make us two.

Into—yes, that’s more like it. As in, Now I’m broken into.”

“They say nothing lasts forever but they’re scared it will last longer than they can love it.”

“Because being knocked down was already understood, already a given, it was the skin you wore. To ask What’s good? was to move, right away, to joy. It was pushing aside what was inevitable to reach the exceptional.”

“And like a word, I hold no weight in this world yet still carry my own life.”