On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong

The thing that struck me most about On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was Vuong’s incredibly astute, honest, and often heartbreaking observations about life, love, lust, abuse, and fear.

Beginning as an exploration of the Vietnamese-American immigrant experience, a gripping love story rises up and becomes the heart of the story. Little Dog - our protagonist, who we can safely assume, given the semi-autobiographical nature of the novel is Vuong himself - meets Trevor, and falls in love.

I won’t detail much more of the story here, as Vuong tells it much better than I ever could. There is almost an abstract quality to the writing, despite it often being grounded in very harsh reality - that is the beauty of Vuong’s poetic style.

Similarly to Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, this is a story of love and abuse, of loss and sorrow, of joy and of pain. If you give in to its beautiful journey, there is much profundity and reflection to be had in its brief 246 pages.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

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Buy On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous from Apple Books and Amazon.