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

This book is so gorgeously written, the impressionistic language used and the pictures painted are at once horrific, damaging and tender with deep feeling. A love letter to a cherished mother, it explores beginnings and endings from the explosive consequences of the Vietnam War to the broken underbelly of contemporary America. A book to wallow in, to mourn its sadness and enjoy its pleasures, all at the same time.

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.

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.

A stunningly brilliant book.

I really enjoyed this novel. I had heard a lot about it on bookstagram, but it is through one of my University courses that I took the opportunity to read it! I wasn't disappointed. The writing style is amazing, with vivid images and strong emotions that can only make you sympathise with Little Dog. I really like the different themes observed: the relation mother/son, queerness, child abuse, generational trauma...etc. I really recommend it!

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.

I found this so dull. It is about one person retelling some harrowing experiences and explaining his feelings. So there is little plot — and plot is crucial to most novels as it makes them interesting and intriguing. Plot explains relationships and interactions more than the interior thought of just one soul. This story tells the troubled early life of a boy of mixed Vietnam and US descent. He is victimised and abused. It has the feel, to me, of a young author being encouraged in creative writing classes to write about his feelings — but he has not been encouraged to write about more than his narrator's experience. So the book is actually very narrow. I am puzzled that so many people like the book. It has been given 5 stars by other 5,000 reviewers on Amazon (as I write this review).

This book hit me hard in ways I didn’t expect. It offered a window into experiences far from my own - as a white British woman - while still striking so many familiar chords: the struggle of growing up with a complex, damaged parent, the search for identity, the quiet resilience of survival. Vuong captures it all with lyrical brilliance and vulnerability. I'm struggling to find words to fully convey how this book made me feel, but I know I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

Quality of the book looks perfect

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.

“They say nothing lasts forever but they're just scared it will last longer than they can love it.” Not one of my favorites but still pretty good. This books was real and didn’t hide anything from the reader. I like how this book was raw but at the same time I didn’t. I feel like there’s somethings that you don’t talk about but at the same time I liked that it was talked about because it made the book real and it’s real events that can happen.