The New York Times bestselling debut novel from the prize-winning prodigy
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, and the New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
A stunning, beautiful book... His writing is phenomenal... Simply
brilliant.
*BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review*
This is some of the most moving writing I’ve read… The tenderness
of the prose feels like a triumph against a world hellbent on
embittering the tenderhearted… the truths arrived at in this book
are valuable precisely because they are steeped in feeling.
*New York Times*
Vuong is surely a literary descendant of the author of Leaves of
Grass. Emerging from the most marginalized circumstances, he has
produced a lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly
intimate and insistently universal… Not so much briefly gorgeous as
permanently stunning.
*Washington Post*
Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous confirms him as a
master of inventive language that has its roots in the spoken word
but reaches shimmering heights of lyricism, too.
*Sunday Independent *Books of the Year**
Vuong is a prodigious talent, his handling of words and images both
brutal and delicate, his treatment of violence, sex and the body
radically clear-eyed.
*Financial Times*
Vuong as a writer is daring. He goes where the hurt is, creating a
novel saturated with yearning and ache… He transforms the
emotional, the visceral, the individual into the political in an
unforgettable – indeed, gorgeous – novel.
*Time Magazine*
Ocean Vuong’s fantastic new novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty
does hard and important work.
*New Statesman*
A stunning, frankly unforgettable debut novel… It's not surprising
that novels by poets often include some of the loveliest prose, but
Vuong's is especially luminous… On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous is
so many things; a love story from a son to his mother; an
exploration of masculinity and race; and a series of limpid
thoughts about the world… Everything about this book makes me feel
glad to live in an era when the novel still matters, when the human
ability to bring together words and sentences can lead to such
scintillating, poignant language.
*Herald Scotland*
Vuong’s material is gripping even in precis… Vuong’s determination
to see well-trodden ground afresh, with unremitting complexity, is
extremely rare... In these authenticity-hungry times, Vuong could
have let his sensational biography simply “speak for itself”. There
is a great deal to admire: that he was able to give such personal
material novelistic treatment; that he had the patience to wait
until that was possible; that he only had wait until he was 30…
[an] exciting talent.
*Sunday Times*
[Vuong] mines his extraordinary family story with passion and
beauty… Vuong writes wonderfully.
*Guardian*
This is a stunning, sensuous novel that paints a portrait of a
mother and her child struggling to work out how to live in a new
land. There is fear and anger but the boy’s love for his mother –
and for the world that surrounds him – sings off the page.
*Monocle*
Utterly captivating writing.
*Daily Mail*
Vuong can write with exceptional beauty and precision... [On Earth
We’re Briefly Gorgeous] is a deeply moving book – I welled up
roughly every 40 pages… one of the great strengths of this book is
the way it elevates the personal into the political. Little Dog’s
story is the story of modern America.
*Daily Telegraph*
One of American’s most noteworthy poets. His poems are beautiful
and unpredictable, and the same goes for this, his debut novel…
brilliantly raw.
*Sunday Times*
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a masterpiece: a staggeringly
beautiful book, full of wisdom and pain. It seems obvious now,
though it didn’t before, that a young gay poet born in Saigon would
write the Great American Novel. I really think it’s that. A huge
gift to the world.
Readers who are familiar with Vuong’s poetry will recognise in this
book the same lyricism, the same skill in turning a beautiful and
poignant phrase which renders many of Vuong’s pronouncements
timeless, lending them the quality of adages and deeply-earned
wisdom… This is certainly a courageous work; some of the details of
the young narrator’s relationship (particularly his sexual
relationship) with Trevor seem new to fiction… This is a work that
has much to say, and is in many respects worthy of attention.
*Irish Times*
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous will be described – rightly – as
luminous, shattering, urgent, necessary. But the word I keep
circling back to is raw: that's how powerful the emotions here are,
and how you'll feel after reading it – scoured down to bone. With a
poet’s precision, Ocean Vuong examines whether putting words to
one's experience can bridge wounds that span generations, and
whether it’s ever possible to be truly heard by those we love
most.
Look out: here's a new, beautiful, battering ram of fiction. Vuong
is rewriting what fiction is supposed to be and it is a privilege
to watch.
A bruised, breathtaking love letter never meant to be sent. A
marvel.
Vuong is a mightily gifted observer… Some lines have the almost
hallucinatory exactness of his best poems… moving and rarely less
than excellent… [On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is] unleashed in
every regard.
*New York Times*
This is one of the best novels I've ever read. Ocean Vuong is a
master. This book is a masterpiece.
Ocean Vuong runs up against the limits of language—this book is
addressed to a mother who cannot read it—and expands our sense of
what literature can make visible, thinkable, felt across borders
and generations and genres. This is a courageous, embodied inquiry
into the tangle of colonial and personal histories. It is also a
gorgeous argument for astonishment over irony—for the
transformative possibilities of love.
Ocean Vuong's novel is a profound consideration of identity, as
well as a work of sensuous, poetic detail... we are made aware of
his sense of invisibility as a Vietnamese-American while becoming
totally immersed in his world. This tension between voice and
silence is what lends the novel its gentle, dignified attack.
*New Statesman*
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.
A candid meditation on masculinity, art, and the inescapable pull
of opioids... Vuong peels apart phrases and reconfigures them into
new, surprising ideas.
*Elle*
An epistolary masterpiece... Fearless, revelatory,
extraordinary.
*Library Journal (starred review)*
Disarmingly frank, raw in subject matter but polished in style and
language, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous reveals the strengths and
limitations of human connection and the importance of speaking your
truth.
*BookPage*
[Vuong's] first foray into fiction is poetic in the deepest sense -
not merely on the level of language, but in its structure and its
intelligence... The result is an uncategorizable hybrid of what
reads like memoir, bildungsroman, and book-length poem. More
important than labels, though, is the novel's earnest and
open-hearted belief in the necessity of stories and language for
our survival. A raw and incandescently written foray into fiction
by one of our most gifted poets.
*Kirkus (starred review)*
Casting a truly literary spell, Vuong's tale of language and
origin, beauty and the power of story, is an enrapturing first
novel.
*Booklist (starred review)*
Sometimes a writer comes along and stops your breath. I'm reading
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and there is so little air moving
through my body as I read. When writing is this good, who needs
air?
A poignant exploration of a family history, a celebration of
maternal love and an unflinching examination of race and class.
Vuong's novel is one of the most anticipated of the year.
*National*
[A] marvel of a book…[with] exquisite language.
*Refinery29*
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is one of the most anticipated
novels of the year… a piece of autobiographical fiction that avoids
all the traps of that genre… The book has a poetic density that is
at once elliptical and unflinching in its gaze, a testimony to the
endlessly complicated dynamics of damage.
*Observer*
As an evocation of the tragic underside of American life, there’s
no denying its [On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous] poetic power.
*Mail on Sunday*
Ocean Vuong is a magician with words, when he writes, it’s as if
language itself is dancing. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous… [is] a
brutally honest exploration of race, class and masculinity. This
debut novel is a luminous, mesmerising gift… Extraordinary.
*attitude, *Book of the Month**
This moving, powerful debut from prizewinning poet Ocean Vuong…
[is] a graceful exploration of race, class, and masculinity.
*Sunday Express*
Vuong solidifies the epistolary as an insurrectionary American
form, offering it as a means of the States’ oppressed to voice
their discontents with unrelenting eloquence… Vuong writes from a
site of pain and compassion, for himself, for his mother, and for
everyone else.
*The Arts Desk*
A moving, glittering letter from a son to a mother… direct,
touching, stunningly wrought, [On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is]
staggeringly good.
*UK Press Syndication*
A brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity, as
well as a discovery of how immersed we are in addiction, violence,
and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness.
*SCAN, *Summer reads of 2019**
Unforgettable… 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.
*SheerLuxe, *Summer reads of 2019**
Vuong’s gambit is to make the reader reckon not only with difficult
subjects, but also pay generous, open attention to the world… This
consummately American novel both documents the nation’s wounded
psyche while giving its protagonist a path to healing.
*Prospect*
Vuong…[is] a keen anthropologist of the contemporary American
experience.
*Times Literary Supplement*
A beautiful novel full of raw feelings.
*Scotsman*
[A] phosphorescent debut novel… Vuong layers past and present
brilliantly in a shifting series of brief episodes and striking
mood-musings from within the mind of his protagonist… the
hyperreality of Little Dog’s self-awareness is always a
delight.
*Tablet*
Staggering, sensual and poetic
*Pandora Sykes*
[A] stunning debut… Ocean Vuong crafts lyrical, masterful prose in
this emotionally-powerful piece of story telling. On Earth We’re
Briefly Gorgeous is sure to stay with readers long after they have
put the novel down.
*Eastern Daily Press*
A brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.
*Asian Art Newspaper, *Books of the Year**
A tender exploration of violence, migration and language.
*Guardian, *Books of the Year**
This romantic, lusciously written debut lingers over kisses.
*The Times, *Books of the Year**
A magical synthesis of memoir, fiction and poetry.
*Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year**
So very full of beauty and power. Also, grace.
*Observer, *Books of the Year**
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is a stunning,
relentless work of pure passion and I was captivated from the
go.
*Sunday Independent *Books of the Year**
A story that is deeply relatable, understandable and can find
common currency with us all. He uses his differences to connect us,
to show the links that bind us, to explore violence, masculinity,
poverty and yearning… you’ll quickly get carried away by his
undercurrents into spaces and places you’d perhaps never thought of
exploring or even realised existed.
*Gscene*
Vuong’s gift lies in his ability to write with beautiful
specificity while digging into the wounds of immigration, culture,
queerness and memory. I’ve read many very good books in 2019 but
none have obliterated me like On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
*Skinny, *Books of the Year**
Ocean Vuong is a magician with words. When he writes, it's as if
language itself is dancing. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is… a
brutally honest exploration of race, class and masculinity. This
debut novel is a luminous, mesmerising gift.
*attitude, *Books of the Year**
Astounding.
*Upcoming*
Vuong jettisons the prose for poetic verse, with Roland Barthes,
Duchamp’s Fountain and queer love all collapsing into splintering
lines of verse. Vuong’s sentences are so beautiful, sometimes I
would say them over and over again in my head, hoping I might be
able to trap them in there.
*Independent*
[Vuong is] brilliant and so flexible with language and has such an
understanding of what an emotion incarnate is, he is able to not
condense it but to heighten it across languages, across countries,
across codes as characters speak to one another. He's peerless.
*Observer*
[A] triumphant debut novel... On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous felt
like a true masterpiece being crafted before my eyes, and I was
devastated to see the novel draw to a close. I truly can't
recommend this book highly enough - I don't remember the last time
I was so floored after reading something that I had to take the
rest of the day off speaking to family... a passionate, eye-opening
journey, and is most certainly one to be added to your lockdown
reading list.
*Glasgow Guardian*
Beautifully written... Unlike anything I have read before
*Exeposé*
An engrossing coming-of-age story.
*Sunday Times*
[Vuong] is an author of incredible and magical talent, with many of
his paragraphs reading like the most beautiful poetry... An
absolute must-read
*Glamour*
Raw, lyrical and at times hearth-wrenching, On Earth We're Briefly
Gorgeous is a book of real beauty
*i*
For a long time after I read this, I could still feel the impact of
his story. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is an experience that
you need to have.
*DIVA*
I read the novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
while on tour and the language often stopped me in my tracks...
powerful.
*Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2023**
Inventive... [On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous] just stops you as a
reader to marvel at the beautifully constructed narrative
*Art Newspaper*
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