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

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The Sunday Times bestselling debut novel from the prize-winning prodigy ** Sunday Times Bestseller ** Brilliant, heart-breaking and highly original, TikTok has fallen in love with Ocean Vuong's shattering portrait of a family. This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family's struggle to forge a new future. It serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog's life his mother has never known - episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion - all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation. 'A marvel' Marlon James 'Luminous, shattering, urgent, necessary' Celeste Ng

Reviews

A stunning, beautiful book... His writing is phenomenal... Simply brilliant. * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review *
This is some of the most moving writing Ive 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 thats shockingly intimate and insistently universal Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning. -- Ron Charles * 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. -- Joseph O'Connor * 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 Vuongs fantastic new novel On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty does hard and important work. -- Rebecca Solnit * 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. -- James Robertson * Herald Scotland *
Vuongs material is gripping even in precis Vuongs 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. -- Tessa Hadley * 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 boys love for his mother and for the world that surrounds him sings off the page. * Monocle *
Utterly captivating writing. -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Mail *
Vuong can write with exceptional beauty and precision... [On Earth Were 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 Dogs story is the story of modern America. -- Tristram Fane Saunders * Daily Telegraph *
One of Americans most noteworthy poets. His poems are beautiful and unpredictable, and the same goes for this, his debut novel brilliantly raw. * Sunday Times *
On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous is a masterpiece: a staggeringly beautiful book, full of wisdom and pain. It seems obvious now, though it didnt before, that a young gay poet born in Saigon would write the Great American Novel. I really think its that. A huge gift to the world.
Readers who are familiar with Vuongs poetry will recognise in this book the same lyricism, the same skill in turning a beautiful and poignant phrase which renders many of Vuongs 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 narrators 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. -- Sen Hewitt * Irish Times *
On Earth Were 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 poets precision, Ocean Vuong examines whether putting words to one's experience can bridge wounds that span generations, and whether its 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 Were 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 languagethis book is addressed to a mother who cannot read itand 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 ironyfor 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 Vuongs 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 Were 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, theres no denying its [On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous] poetic power. * Mail on Sunday *
Ocean Vuong is a magician with words, when he writes, its as if language itself is dancing. On Earth Were 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

Author Bio

Ocean Vuong was a Ruth Lilly fellow and winner of a Pushcart Prize, and has received honours and awards from Poets House and the Academy of American Poets. Night Sky with Exit Wounds won the 2016 Whiting Award in the States, and the 2017 Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the T.S. Eliot Prize in the UK. He teaches at Amherst College, Massachusetts.