On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: The million-copy bestselling TikTok sensation about family, identity and survival

Of all the adjectives that come to mind when thinking of this book, tender is the one that lingers. Written as a letter from a son to his illiterate mother, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is at once emotional, raw, saturated, lyrical, crushing, sanguine, and romantic. As Little Dog, Vuong tends to a verdant emotional garden filled with trauma and love in equal measure. It is the story of an outsider who begins to find himself and his place in the world through the history of his Vietnamese mother and grandmother and the memories of Trevor, his 'all-American' first love. This book is powerful in all the right places and although it can tend toward the unstructured whimsy of poetry at time, it finds its way back to solid footing time after time. Descriptions of time spent with his loved ones are expressed with such detail and precision as to place you in the room with all of your senses on high alert. There are passages so incredibly diaphanous in prose yet profuse in imagery that my breath would catch. Stunning and beautiful. And so very tender.

I honestly really enjoyed this book. The format was fun and the narrative was very engaging 95% of the time. And clearly, it's absolutely gorgeous stylistically. My only qualm, which stops me from making this a full five star review, is that it toes the line between poetry and prose a little uncomfortably at times. I'm a big fan of narrative poems (Max Porter is a fantastic contemporary poet to look into here), and a fan of more poetic prose, and this doesn't easily fit into either category. Which is fantastic! ...most of the time. There are just a couple instances where it was jarring, dull, or maybe a little unpolished. It's a hard style to edit though, so I wonder how much of this I can level at Vuong and how much it's truly the fault of his publishers. Still a very beautiful novel that I have to say is worthy of all the praise it gets.

Don't let my opinion influence your decision to read this. It deserves to be read. Hailed as a Masterpiece, and I was looking forward to reading it. However I found it confusing and often repetitive.. Ii t gave the impression, it had been written by a person in a highly emotional state. If this is autobiographical, my heart bleeds for you. It put me im mind of Catcher in the Rye. Which I also felt was highly charged, emotionally .

Firstly, this is so not my style of book I thought I would enjoy but OMG! I loved everything about it. It was just raw tender poetry and I couldn’t get enough. It was a masterpiece in writing and I had to actually reread some passages again and again, they were so good. This story and writing will stay with me forever.

This book, to me, is very much like a master work of modern art. It is immensely lyrical, dripping in vivid imagery and intense emotion. Also much like a work of art, you know that as you stare at it, there is so much more going on then what you can physically see and you might be able to grasp it if only you had a little more of ... something. This book is profoundly meaningful from cover to cover, to the point that it can be frustrating knowing that you are not really reaching the full scope of what the author is trying to describe. In some fairness, the author themselves are seemingly equally frustrated trying to understand their place in the world, and perhaps just sharing their frustration is enough for this book. Somewhere in the book I stopped actively trying to know what was going on in any deeper sense of the word and just let them imagery wash over me, keeping whatever experience seemed to stick. That’s how I recommend reading this book: take what you can, but think of it more as a meditation rather than a message.

Amazing book

I went into On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong expecting something deeply emotional—and in many ways, it absolutely is. This is a very sad, reflective story that explores generational trauma, immigration, identity, sexuality, addiction, and the complicated love between a mother and son. The novel is written as a letter from the narrator, Little Dog, to his illiterate mother, recounting memories of his childhood and family history shaped by the aftermath of the Vietnam War. However, despite the heavy themes and beautiful moments of prose, I really struggled to connect with it. You can very clearly tell that Vuong is first and foremost a poet. His writing is lyrical and often stunning on a sentence level, and it’s obvious that he’s drawing from deeply personal and painful experiences. But for me, that poetic style came at the expense of narrative flow. The book jumps around between timelines, memories, and reflections so frequently that I found it difficult to stay immersed in the story. Instead of feeling emotionally pulled in, I kept feeling like I was being pulled out of the story because I couldn’t quite figure out where we were in the timeline or where the narrative was heading. The structure feels very fragmented—more like a collection of poetic memories than a cohesive novel. While I appreciate what the book was trying to do—exploring memory, trauma, identity, and storytelling itself—the lack of clear narrative direction made it difficult for me to stay engaged. Personally, I think stronger editing and a more focused structure could have helped turn this into an incredibly powerful and emotionally devastating story. There are undeniably beautiful passages here, and I can absolutely see why this book resonates with so many readers. Unfortunately, for me, the disjointed structure made it hard to connect with the characters or fully feel the emotional impact.

I can see that this is clever writing, and the sort of thing that wins prizes, but it was a hard read. This was partly the subject matter and partly the unclear narrative.

Beautiful. I enjoyed how artfully and thoughtfully each sentence in this book was put together. It engages all the senses and inspires all kinds of emotions.

An extremely powerful narrative of a Vietnamese boy and his relationship with his mother and grandmother living as expatriates in the USA. Also it portrays a coming of age story set in a rural part of America seen with different lenses and the discovery for his first love for a bitterly sad teenage boy. Writing a letter to his illiterate mother, the narrator reveals all the suffering and complexities that their lives carried away and their struggle for mutual understanding living in a new country. This a debut autobiographical novel by the highly-awarded poet Ocean Vuong who gives us a heartbreaking punch of his experience for being a foreigner in America. The narrative is full of poetry in its poignant fabric of his personal life and reminded me of a great Portuguese writer as well: Valter Hugo Mãe. It was a great pleasure to read such a captivating and intense novel.

Style does not sit with me, but then again I am not a native english speaker.

Such a moving book. Could not put it down.

The travails of migration, always being a stranger in your adopted ‘new land’. Loved this book, rich in story and pathos.