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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
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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!
What the critics say
“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)
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What listeners say about On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- MarianaPontes
- 2021-10-19
Ocean Vuong is a monster
Ocean Vuong is not only an amazing writer, he’s a fully develop artist in every sense of the word. This was an incredible Audible experience
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- don ferguson
- 2019-09-24
Truly beautiful !
Vuong’s prose is a work of art. This is a sweeping saga that expands and contracts like a beating heart, told with Vuong’s seemingly innate sense of rhythm and metaphor. A genuine soul-baring account of a boyhood adrift in contradiction.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2023-08-06
goosebumps even when I think of it
this book is painfully beautiful. I cried and I laughed and I empathized with Ocean so much. beautifully written, incredibly personal, and the narrative is gripping and raw. an emotional and enjoyable experience from start to finish.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Andy Chen
- 2022-01-05
So powerful, a physical experience!
Vuong's approach to story telling let alone his powerful narration absolutely left the hairs on my arms stand up page after page. While I may not be Vietnamese, I am Taiwanese-Canadian immigrant belonging to the LGBT+ community this novel truly reached deep into my heart. His beautiful composure of his letter and the delivery of his words to his mother left an imprint and absolutely moved me as I listen to him. A poetic gesture to love, life and death. Best to keep kleenex close by.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Madeline
- 2020-10-11
Intense and very moving
Deftly written with a poetic sense of prose. This story was intimate, personal and very touching.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- hnif
- 2022-01-27
beautiful and haunting.
this book was such a wonderful dive into a life. there was gentle honesty in exploring the nooks and crannies of all the people orbiting his life. really beautiful prose and SO worth it if you’re poetically inclined. a seriously beautiful piece of work.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Hermes
- 2019-09-10
I felt like a real human being listening to this
I am listening to the person as much as to the story. I had to buy this after I heard the sample of Ocean Vuong's voice writing a letter to mother. I was crushed. I had to hear more. I had to take it slow, in small pieces and in private because hearing the words I couldn't walk. I had to kneel weeping. At first. I couldn't bear it but this grieving son had to have his sadness. At least it's real and I felt close to my mother hearing Ocean. Every son loves his mother. Maybe because of this book I was able to the second time release the last of my mother's crushed bones in the river.
By 'performance' I mean narration: 5/5. I thought the author-narrator was a woman until the story progressed. It didn't matter. Ocean's voice is perfect for the subjects.
By 'overall' I mean the writing: 5/5. Poetic. Believable. I am there. Even if it isn't a true story it has to be true. Co-incidentally, I lost my mum to the anguish, frustration and fear of dementia. Then the raw slow grip of death. I will never know what part her doctors' prescriptions for anti-psychotics and many years of oxycodone played.
By 'story' I mean content: 4/5 This book is not gay literature and I hope the author refuses to accept any such writing awards of that label. It is about a man's coming to terms with who he is, about his relationship with his lover, and his respect for his gramma and his mum (who has a character fault - so did mine, whose doesn't and who doesn't?)
The only reason I took off one point is because the graphic descriptions of sex and sexual attraction. Even if affectionate more often than raw (there is only one truly 'get down and dirty' episode, a small minority of the book), well... how to put thus honestly and respectfully... as one psychiatrist from Montreal points out, sexuality isn't about 'preferences' so much as it's about the clear line, the disgust factor. For me, it's any cocks in the story other than my own or a sympathetic protaganist doing the fucking with a female (get used to Anglo-Saxon vulgarities mixed with Latinate high-brow in the book too).
But more that than I couldn't see the appeal of macho Trevor, even for Ocean. But, mostly just the details of Trevor's body and sex I could do without. Yet, that wouldn't be fair. The author is the author and this is his genuine experience. It has been a few hundred (thousand?) years of men who aren't the slightest bit interested in breeder couple love-making scenes in movies. They too must have been squirming or like myself ignoring it all ir trying hard to appreciate it on some level. They haven't been throwing up all over the place. So, lesson learned.
The good news is that sex is not the overwhelming part of the book, but it *is* a significant part so I had to as if change my mental gears to neutral and focus on the emotions which could be anyone's, including my own. Ultimately, with all the sex, it's still a love story, of desire, seduction, play, pleasure and loss. And from a male perspective - so I can certainly relate to it better than a formulaic female romance novel.
And although on the level of feeling the following didn't bother me, intellectually/ politically it did: the boys are 14 and 16 at the beginning of the story (something like that). I am happy for them. But not completely. I am in fact envious. Why?
Where is the fiction or literature with erotic elements written from the POV of a young girl and her lust and love for her slightly older barely of-majority male (or for that matter, female) lover? Whenever a few works appear there is outrage from the academy and censorship from sponsors. Effectively, statistically, such a genre doesn't exist! Now, obviously I don't blame the author for social standards (and double standards in law) but it still bugs me - that this erotic aesthetic that skirts the edges of propriety is accepted in the homosexual world (and by heterosexuals of the homosexual world) but not by heterosexuals in the heterosexual world. There is a double standard in life as in art. I am guessing that there is also tolerance for these kinds of stories among lesbians. Maybe it is something as prosaic as straight men don't read. But I think there is more to it. And more sinister.
Conclusion: get over it and congratulate the author.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- S. Purcell
- 2019-10-09
interesting book
very well written book about coming of age as a gay immigrant kid. Quite impressive for a first novel.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2022-01-13
Unparalleled
Ocean Vuong writes in such a vulnerable and artistic way that just breaks you. I don’t think I’ve ever read/listened to something as emotional and real. As an queer Asian Canadian, it’s like this book cracked me open and I absolutely loved it. I think this is something that will stick with me for a long, long time.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2019-06-21
Enigmatic and perplexing, in a good way!
Reading On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous is akin to admiring a piece of art, acknowledging the genius of certain aspects, failing to understand other ambiguous components, but ultimately concluding that it was, at the end of the day, indeed something special.
I confess that there are aspects of this book that I did not connect with, or moved through too fast to fully grasp what Vuong was trying to say. As well, Gorgeous has an enigmatic and perplexing structure that is representative of the mind of a poet, where nothing is linear, everything is circular, everything is connected, and the most unexpected emotions and memories flare up at any given time.
Regardless, this is definitely a book I will return to in time - I was confused, I was frustrated, I was overwhelmed, I was moved, I was awed by the author’s literary talent.
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4 people found this helpful