On Earth We´re Briefly Gorgeous

 

I love reading and I am reading a lot every single day, but lately I am rarely impressed deep until the most secret layers of my brain by a writer or a writing. Especially the writing.

Since I´ve read Ocean Vuong´s poetry collection I wanted to read his debut novel with a strong autobiographical layer On Earth We´re Briefly Gorgeous. Thanks to my generous libraries I am surrounded by, most of my bookish wishes are becoming reality. When the first book of an author left such a strong good impression, I am usually careful to not break the spell and wait a bit longer for the second one, but this time I simply couldn´t wait for too long. And my impatience was generously rewarded.

A Vietnamese-American queer son called Little Dog is writing a long letter to his illiterate mother, Rose. Raw, direct, emotionally intense yet simple in the choice of words and exquisite in the investigation of the feelings and their match into the mind and everyday reality, the book shares the same poetic touch, but transposed in a fictional environment it makes it even more pertaining. The son is observing the mother alone and during their direct interactions, the mother as a source of life and a direct connection to the past and present. It is through the mother and his mother´s mother that his integrity - as soul and body - is created and Vuong builds the perfect balance between the two. Hence, it´s organic originality of language and narrative. ´I hate and love your battered hands for what they can never be´. The mother is never answering but by concentrating the writing on a different person it gives direction and dedication to the story.

The writing is strong not only as essentially wordsmitten but for the purposeful sophistication of the simplicity. Through words, a whole world is remade and questioned. This is one of the many examples of writing: ´Some people say history moves in a spiral, not the line we have come to expect. We travel through time in a circular trajectory, our sintance increasing from an epicenter only to return again, one circle removed´. 

On Earth We´re Briefly Gorgeous is everything one lover of word(l)s can expect to read over and over again, one paragraph or page or book at a time.

Rating: 5 stars