'I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly. Like right now, how the sun is coming on low behind the elms, and I can't tell the difference between sunset and sunrise. The world. reddening, appears the same to me - and I lose track of east and west. the colours this morning have the frayed tint of something already leaving....Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.'*
Previous to this debut novel, Ocean Vuong was a much lauded Asian American poet. Its title tells you everything you might wish to say about the rhapsodic nature of its literary soul - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. It is written as a series of letters from a son 'Little Dog' to his Ma, his Vietnamese Mother who can only speak a handful of English words, and can read even less. So the way the novel is presented from the start, is that the recipient of these letters will never know what these letters contain, nor understand what personal message and struggles her son is trying to convey to his Ma.
And these are a mixture of his own recollections, also family legends and myths about their earlier lives living in Vietnam. A child's, a teenager's and an adult's perceptions of being brought up in Saigon and then America. What it is like to be an immigrant, when you are surrounded by a barely welcoming host population. How you survive practically, emotionally, spiritually. 'Little Dogs' father 'disappears' early on in his life, that he has a vague recovered memory of later in the novel. How his white 'Grandpa' Paul, there as a serviceman, brings them to America and makes them his own. 'Little Dog's' fragile sense of who he feels himself to be, begins to pull together once he encounters his first teenage lover Trevor.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous shifts from its initial tone of melancholy and regret for how little he understands of his own Mother and her history. From the moment he meets Trevor the language in the novel is on fire. Some of its reveries are stunning evocations of a place and of people. A whole chapter describing the streets and significant buildings of his home town, each with its own distinct tale to tell. And there's the differing stories 'Trevor' and 'Little Dog' tell each other, one sees being gay as similar to a passing mood, the other the resolution of a personal destiny. The sex scenes though explicit, are run through with their evolving love and tender physical affection. Their relationship is the watershed moment where the emphasis shifts from building up a history and a recollected past world to one hurtling into a much more multi-coloured, multi-layered, yet fraught future. Its emotions more confident and clear headed, though nervous.
Much of this novel has the air of the semi-autobiographical. Its a touching love letter to his own background and Mother, and a raw, exposing revelation of coming out and the unearthing of his latent literary talent. Initially I wasn't sure whether I liked the fractured episodic narrative. But the explosion of the love affair brought something else out onto the page. It was as though this was where Ocean Vuong finally located and nailed his true voice as a writer. Something breaks out, that makes one really want to read what his new novel The Emperor Of Gladness, might bring forth. As a debut novel, this has a clear sense of its own unique voice, one that is quite rare. I can only think of Douglas Stuart's Shuggy Bain in recent years that has had a similarly confident hold on its own particular style and sense of place and language.
CARROT REVIEW -6/8
* Taken from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Published by Vintage 2019
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