«[A] triumphant debut novel... On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous felt like a true masterpiece being crafted before my eyes, and I was devastated to see the novel draw to a close. I truly can't recommend this book highly enough - I don't remember the last time I was so floored after reading something that I had to take the rest of the day off speaking to family... a passionate, eye-opening journey, and is most certainly one to be added to your lockdown reading list.»

Rebecca Scott, Glasgow Guardian

«Beautifully written... Unlike anything I have read before»

Ellie Down, Exeposé

«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, Herald Scotland

«This is a stunning, sensuous novel that paints a portrait of a mother and her child struggling to work out how to live in a new land. There is fear and anger but the boy’s love for his mother – and for the world that surrounds him – sings off the page.»

Monocle

«Utterly captivating writing.»

Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail

«Vuong can write with exceptional beauty and precision... [On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous] is a deeply moving book – I welled up roughly every 40 pages… one of the great strengths of this book is the way it elevates the personal into the political. Little Dog’s story is the story of modern America.»

Tristram Fane Saunders, Daily Telegraph

«One of American’s most noteworthy poets. His poems are beautiful and unpredictable, and the same goes for this, his debut novel… brilliantly raw.»

Sunday Times

«Vuong is a mightily gifted observer… Some lines have the almost hallucinatory exactness of his best poems… moving and rarely less than excellent… [On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is] unleashed in every regard.»

New York Times

«This is one of the best novels I've ever read. Ocean Vuong is a master. This book is a masterpiece.»

«On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a masterpiece: a staggeringly beautiful book, full of wisdom and pain. It seems obvious now, though it didn’t before, that a young gay poet born in Saigon would write the Great American Novel. I really think it’s that. A huge gift to the world.»

«A moving, glittering letter from a son to a mother… direct, touching, stunningly wrought, [On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is] staggeringly good.»

UK Press Syndication

«A brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity, as well as a discovery of how immersed we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness.»

SCAN, *Summer reads of 2019*

«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.»

Financial Times

«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.»

Time Magazine

«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, New Statesman

«Readers who are familiar with Vuong’s poetry will recognise in this book the same lyricism, the same skill in turning a beautiful and poignant phrase which renders many of Vuong’s pronouncements timeless, lending them the quality of adages and deeply-earned wisdom… This is certainly a courageous work; some of the details of the young narrator’s relationship (particularly his sexual relationship) with Trevor seem new to fiction… This is a work that has much to say, and is in many respects worthy of attention.»

Seán Hewitt, Irish Times

«This book – gorgeous is right there in the title – finds incredible, aching beauty in the deep observation of love in many forms. Ocean Vuong’s debut novel contains all the power of his poetry, and I finished the book knowing that we are seeing only the very beginning of his truly magnificent talent.»

«Vuong…[is] a keen anthropologist of the contemporary American experience.»

Times Literary Supplement

«A beautiful novel full of raw feelings.»

Scotsman

«Unforgettable… 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.»

SheerLuxe, *Summer reads of 2019*

«Vuong’s gambit is to make the reader reckon not only with difficult subjects, but also pay generous, open attention to the world… This consummately American novel both documents the nation’s wounded psyche while giving its protagonist a path to healing.»

Prospect

«On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous will be described – rightly – as luminous, shattering, urgent, necessary. But the word I keep circling back to is raw: that's how powerful the emotions here are, and how you'll feel after reading it – scoured down to bone. With a poet’s precision, Ocean Vuong examines whether putting words to one's experience can bridge wounds that span generations, and whether it’s ever possible to be truly heard by those we love most.»

«Look out: here's a new, beautiful, battering ram of fiction. Vuong is rewriting what fiction is supposed to be and it is a privilege to watch.»

«A bruised, breathtaking love letter never meant to be sent. A marvel.»

«Ocean Vuong runs up against the limits of language—this book is addressed to a mother who cannot read it—and expands our sense of what literature can make visible, thinkable, felt across borders and generations and genres. This is a courageous, embodied inquiry into the tangle of colonial and personal histories. It is also a gorgeous argument for astonishment over irony—for the transformative possibilities of love.»

«[A] phosphorescent debut novel… Vuong layers past and present brilliantly in a shifting series of brief episodes and striking mood-musings from within the mind of his protagonist… the hyperreality of Little Dog’s self-awareness is always a delight.»

Tablet

«Staggering, sensual and poetic»

Pandora Sykes

«[A] stunning debut… Ocean Vuong crafts lyrical, masterful prose in this emotionally-powerful piece of story telling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is sure to stay with readers long after they have put the novel down.»

Eastern Daily Press

«A brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.»

Asian Art Newspaper, *Books of the Year*

«A tender exploration of violence, migration and language.»

Justine Jordan, Guardian, *Books of the Year*

«This romantic, lusciously written debut lingers over kisses.»

The Times, *Books of the Year*

«[Vuong] mines his extraordinary family story with passion and beauty… Vuong writes wonderfully.»

Tessa Hadley, Guardian

«Vuong jettisons the prose for poetic verse, with Roland Barthes, Duchamp’s Fountain and queer love all collapsing into splintering lines of verse. Vuong’s sentences are so beautiful, sometimes I would say them over and over again in my head, hoping I might be able to trap them in there.»

Annie Lord, Independent

«[Vuong] is an author of incredible and magical talent, with many of his paragraphs reading like the most beautiful poetry... An absolute must-read»

Glamour

«Raw, lyrical and at times hearth-wrenching, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a book of real beauty»

i

«So very full of beauty and power. Also, grace.»

Tommy Orange, Observer, *Books of the Year*