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Oct 30, 2019
Incredibly vivid, moving prose that bounces between narratives, defying time and place. Vuong has crafted a world so colorful and lucid that it's difficult to pull away from. The author's poetic background truly shines in this novel, whose dynamic narrator makes it easy to forget that you're reading fiction. 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous' ranges between the lighthearted (the narrator's childhood wonder of the world, the beginnings of a summer romance with another boy on a tobacco farm) to the intensely heavy and tragic (the utter devastation of the war in Vietnam and the lasting effects on those escaped, the gripping loss of the American opioid crisis). Definitely ought to be lauded as one of the best books of 2019.