Just read On earth We’re briefly gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, and i was just blown away by the choice of his words, and the way he writes, just amazing book overall.
Admittedly the book was a bit above my level as before this I had mostly limited to young adult fiction books lol
At the end of it, I am feeling proud of myself for having read this and struck through it, happy that I had the chance to read a book like this, it did leave me feeling like I had a bird’s eye moment in life, and I have noticed that I have started appreciating the smaller things in life now, because of the way he describes everything, it’s like a poem.
Regardless it was a super fun read, and it left me feeling bittersweet, and overall just felt I didn’t get a whole circle moment with the ending, is this a normal thing with books like these, or was there a proper ending and it just went over my head?
Can someone help me out with this
by Natscape_
4 Comments
You don’t feel like he laid it on pretty thick with the tragedy porn? I feel like he over-did it entirely. I went from enjoying the book to my eyes rolling back in my head when every three pages he would throw another tragedy at you. He was fine after the first several, just tell a story about them rather than the Three Ring Circus of misery.
It felt extremely cheap and shallow, which is a shame because he has a talent for prose.
I read it a while ago so my review is muted but I remember reading a page or two and then stopping to enjoy his words. He is a poet, primarily.
I thought it was a beautiful coming of age novel. It was tragic, for sure, but I didn’t feel that it was over the top because to a young adult it probably felt that intense—the novel is clearly autobiographical. Was it perfect? No. Was it tidy? No, but that’s not what the topic called for. I liked it, overall. The writing was gorgeous.
Unfortunately I felt the opposite way. I wanted to like it because the premises were interesting, but found it was all smoke and no substance.
He plays a lot with words without really delivering anything. I was halfway through it before deciding it was not interesting enough for me and put it in my dnf stack.