The Nature of Things

Ocean Vuong's first book was a much-praised book of poems in 2016 entitled Night Sky With Exit Wounds . On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is his enigmatically named second book. It is a semi-autobiographical work of literary fiction, but it, too, often reads like poetry. And I never did learn where that title came from. Vuong is a Vietnamese-American writer who was born in Saigon, but his family became refugees after the Vietnam War and ended up in Hartford, Connecticut where he was raised. The family that he writes about in his novel also live in Hartford. His main character is a young writer, in his late 20s. He is the narrator of the story but he narrates through the medium of a letter to his mother. His mother who cannot read. In the letter, he writes of the family history, going back to the time of the war and the life of his grandmother who lived through it. At the time that we meet her, she is elderly and suffering from schizophrenia and cancer. During the war, she worked...