Hey everyone welcome back to the Waterstones vlog, it is Will here and the
book I want to recommend this week - it's going to be one of those vlogs where I'm
going to try not to say too much about the book here because I have interviewed the
author and they are far more eloquent than I will ever be about their work. The
author is Ocean Vuong and the book is On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous which is his
debut novel. Now Ocean Vuong won the TS Eliot and Forward poetry prizes for his poetry
collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds. I went to an event with him and
Kayo Chingonyi at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road which was an incredible event.
They were both absolutely mesmeric and and brilliant performers of their own
poetry. But I've always been wanting to sort of keep an eye on Ocean because
he's something very special and so when news of the debut novel came my way I
was very excited. I'm very pleased I got a chance to read it nice and early.
It was another book that was recommended to me by Max Porter when I was speaking
to him about his own book, Lanny. So there's this kind of lovely circle of
recommendation amongst a sort of group of writers who are all great appreciators
of each other's work and I think if you have read Lanny and enjoyed it and
trust my recommendation then trust me on this one, it's an absolutely fantastic
book. It sort of looks at a character called Little Dog, that's his his sort of
nickname. He's a Vietnamese American and it's very much about several
relationships I suppose. His relationship with his mother who is somebody who has
come from Vietnam to America and is essentially suffering from
post-traumatic stress disorder because of everything that she suffered during
the Vietnam War. And there's a very interesting sort of depiction of her
relationship with her son there's also her own mother, so Little Dog's
grandmother and that sort of family unit. We also see Little Dog's I guess coming
of age really certainly sexually about him falling in love with another man and
about their sort of physical relationship which is described in great
detail. It's not often that you read a book which has such brilliant
descriptions of the physical act of sex without it seeming
a bit kind of rubbish or pornographic. It's very much about the kind of the
feel and the smell and the taste of of all of that.
And brilliantly done with great sensitivity I think. Well, actually, I say
sensitivity but actually there's a real interplay about power in that
relationship which means it's not sensitive it's actually quite
brutal in places. But it's a very, very truthful depiction I think of the
physical act. And this man that he's falling in love with or having this
relationship with is addicted to opioids which of course is a big crisis
in America at the moment and so it sort of taps into that whole discussion as
well. It's set in a sort of quite a rural part of America which is away from the
beaten track and so therefore it's sort of I mean I think rather brilliantly Max
Porter was saying you know of course the Great American Novel has been written by
a gay Vietnamese American. It's America seen through a
different lens which I think is really, really interesting. The writing
throughout is absolutely phenomenal as you would expect from a poet. It's all
about choosing the right word, the right metaphor, the right sort of image. Or not
even the right one but sometimes the surprising one, so that reading through
the book it's constantly filled with little sort of linguistic surprises. And
he's also, as you'll see in the interview, he mentions the fact that he was
inspired by Melville and how in something like Moby-Dick he was able to
incorporate great swathes of factual information. There's a bit of that here
in this but not anything like Melville of course because you can see it's a
much shorter book than Moby-Dick. But that love of the essayistic form I
think is something that he mentions in the interview which I think is very
particular to this book. And it packs a pretty emotional punch as well. There's
lots of really really sort of because of that choice of language there are so
many hooks that get into you as you're reading it and it means that as you get
towards the end you are fully invested in this book. So it's one of those things
where I think there are so many books out there there are great writers there
are good storytellers but we often talk about authors who were the real deal,
people who are really doing something special, who are artists, who are pushing
the envelope and I do think that Ocean Vuong is one of those. Which is why after
reading this I will be the first you know very much at the front of the
queue to read whatever he writes next. So there we go that is On Earth We're
Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong which is out now and that's all for me this week. I
will see you in a few weeks time but until then, take care.
you