Book Review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous By Ocean Vuong
By Harry Mottram: One-part naval gazing, one part a non-linear coming of age novel and one part a letter to his mother Ma. Ocean Vuong’s bildungsroman On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous takes us on a stream of consciousness journey from war torn Vietnam to a nail bar in America. The narrator’s illiterate mother endured a horrific upbringing in a village near Saigon which has scarred her for life, but she’s a survivor and part of the fall out from the Vietnam war which links the country to the USA through countless mixed marriages. In America she holds down part time jobs to support the family. She beats her son and the writer of the memoir, in frustration with her inability to speak English, he the narrator – AKA Little Dog – is bullied at school for looking different and struggles to find his own identity.
But it’s not all grim. Ma has a sense of humour – when a customer at the nail salon confesses her grief at the death from cancer of her ‘Julie’ in her backyard Ma asks ‘But what happen in backyard, why did she die there?’ The woman wiped her eyes. ‘That’s where she lives. Julie’s my horse.’ Ma responds after she’s gone: ‘A fucking horse?’ For the rest of the day one of her colleagues would shout, ‘It’s a fucking horse!’ and everyone would laugh.
The reader has to piece the story together as each anecdote – not always in chronological order – to create a kind of reflective biography of his life, Ma’s life and his grandmother’s life along with the various characters who populate their lives. Ma at times gives a slightly unreliable account of her early life as Little Dog explains: ‘…there were moments when the story would change – not much, just a miniscule detail, the time of day, the colour of someone’s shirt, two air raids instead of three, an AK-47 instead of a 9mm, the daughter laughing, not crying. Shifts in the narrative would occur…’ Which reflect how we all alter and edit our own pasts as we relate them again and again.
On reflecting on the novel – and its episodic anecdotal style there was for me too much introspection and not enough of a narrative. At times there was a loss of direction as the poetry took over and the lives of his father, grandma, friends and workmates left without closure. Some critics have picked up on this aspect of the novel which has left opinions divided with some suggesting literary novels like this are fine to receive accolades and awards but are not necessarily popular with the wider reading public.
Ocean Vuong is known as a poet and at times the story flows purely as poetry rather than as a narrative that is easy to follow – and that has been the main criticism of the book with some saying it’s too composed, too word perfect which detracts from what are really important stories as part of the canon of fiction around the Vietnam War and its effects on those involved in the conflict.
Vuong’s fragmentary, poetic style creates atmosphere which at times drifts into philosophy – time is a spiral – his novel is a phantom and he even ponders as Hamlet did, ‘to be or not to be.’ But through a series of vignettes he touches on so many topics from the golfer Tiger Woods always referred to as black and not half yellow, to the meaning of memory, the dangerous chemicals used in nail bars which can cause damage to the workers and their children and the tobacco growing business when he works on a farm as a cropper. That’s where his love life and sex life with Trevor begins – which takes us into another world as he moves into adult hood and in part’s two and three begins increasingly to reflect on life – when everyone is briefly gorgeous.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was published in 2019 and has won numerous awards. The main image was published in The Independent newspaper showing Vietnamese refugees lining up to be evacuated. The novel reflects Vuong’s own life story. The Vietnam War finally ended in 1975.
The novel was chosen as this season’s read for the Axbridge Four Season’s Book Club. If you are interested in joining email harryfmottram@gmail.com
Axbridge News is edited by Harry Mottram and is published for the interest of himself and fellow residents.
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Email:harryfmottram@gmail.com
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