On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

By: Ocean Vuong

Narrated by: Ocean Vuong

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, written and read by Ocean Vuong.

Brilliant, heartbreaking, tender, and highly original – poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a sweeping and shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous 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 – a history whose epicentre is rooted in Vietnam – and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to the American moment, immersed as it is in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2020**
**A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD 2020**

Critic reviews

Everything is beautiful in this debut... Vuong has originality running through his veins, and a good deal of humour and impish charm... This impressive debut hints at even greater things to come. (Melissa Katsoulis)

A stunning, beautiful book... His writing is phenomenal... Simply brilliant.

This is some of the most moving writing I’ve 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.

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 that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal… Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning. (Ron Charles)

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)

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.

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.

Ocean Vuong’s fantastic new novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty does hard and important work. (Rebecca Solnit)

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)

Vuong’s material is gripping even in precis… Vuong’s 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.

The narration almost ruined it for me.

Amazing read, but the narration was not for me. Consider physically reading rather than listening to this one.

What a debut!

Ocean, through his serene narration, creates this milieu that celebrates and honors parts of society that we otherwise would never even indulge in. Oscillating between various shades of beauty, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous is beyond well constructed. A tender read that seduces with sublime writing, leaving you engulfed and speechless in its pain and beauty.

Poetry became Prose

This is a very emotional experience. I think it is also a very good depiction of America's small rural communities and non-famous cities. Interesting in comparison to Hillbilly Elegy.

Self narration worked

One of the best books of the decade. We await the film version. Hope they get a good director.

More moving than Nabokov.

This story is so moving and real that I don’t think I will ever get over it. The realities of wars on foreign countries, on ourselves..the hatred and misunderstanding of the other, the preying of the stronger upon the weaker in any arena of human existence. It’s all here in this story. I truly understand.
And the celebration of Art as a means to escape, for a time.