"The award-winning poet returns with a prose novel about a young man in poverty-stricken Connecticut who forms an unlikely connection with an ailing older widow"
Vuong has so many wonderful and devoted fans that I accept I may be in a minority with my feelings about this book, which were basically… ‘meh?’ I’m sorry, please don’t hate me! The opening few chapters are very beautiful, as you would expect. But I have to confess that the writing is so detailed as to be dense, and I found myself wanting to just skip along to the next bit of plot. I liked it best in the unexpected moments of humour – ‘“See how our pie has the slightly burnt marshmallows on top, just like how their grandma used to make? Except she didn’t!” A vein pulsed wildly along BJ’s temple. “Hell, they might not even have a grandma, but you pet they’re gonna see her face when they got this pie in their mouth.”. But I’m afraid I personally struggled to get through these 400 pages.
Ocean Vuong returns with an achingly beautiful novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on a bridge, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond that has the power to alter Hai's relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.
The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which our lives are changed by the most unlikely of people. When Hai takes a job at a diner to support himself and Grazina, his fellow workers become the family he didn't expect to find. United by desperation and circumstance, and existing on the fringes of society, together they bear witness to each other's survival.
This is an unforgettable story of unexpected friendship and how far we would go to possess one of life's most fleeting mercies: a second chance.
'A poetic, dramatic and vivid story. It has an epic sweep but it also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality' COLM TÓIBÍN
'Tender and moving' REBECCA SOLNIT
'A masterwork' BRYAN WASHINGTON
Author
About Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, and the New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.
