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Sydney Morning Herald
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Love, loss and found family among America's lower working class
FICTION The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Vuong Jonathan Cape, $34.99 Ocean Vuong achieved fame as a poet before his acclaimed debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, andthere's creative continuity in follow-up The Emperor of Gladness. Previously examined motifs undergo complex transformations so that it reads like the literary equivalent of a musical variation. Autobiography is grist to the mill for Vuong. His mother fled Saigon for the US, via the Philippines, when he was an infant. He was raised in Connecticut among an extended family of Vietnamese refugees. He's also openly gay. These experiences inspire but do not define his creative fiction, and if the vaunted lyricism of a particular style of American dreaming marks the opening of The Emperor of Gladness – a flashy choric invocation of a dead-end Connecticut town, its ghosts inviting suicidal 19-year-old, Hai, to escape by jumping off a bridge – it isn't long before sublime cadence and melancholy grandeur yield to a different kind of song. An old woman spies the boy in the rain, and roundly tells him: 'You can't die in front of my house, okay?' This is Grazina – a force to be reckoned with, having survived Hitler and Stalin in Lithuania during WWII, and now in a battle to preserve her independence against the onset of dementia. Hai moves in as an unofficial carer, to keep her out of a nursing home. Grim doesn't begin to cover their living conditions; the house is decrepit and built on a toxic contamination site and Grazina can't afford to feed them. So Hai lands a job (courtesy of his cousin Sony, named after the television manufacturer) at a budget restaurant chain. As Hai's friendship with Grazina grows, he bathes her, comforts her when decades-old war trauma resurfaces, and engages in role-playing historical battles with her to manage her sundowning. He reads Slaughterhouse Five and The Brothers Karamazov from her dead husband's library and, alas, stumbles across an unused bottle of serious painkillers … dire news for someone recovering from opioid addiction. At work, Hai rocks up to every shift pinned to cope with the drudgery. Genuine camaraderie and unlikely dignity are found among the motley crew who work there, despite some extreme weirdness. Long-serving Maureen evades grief in conspiracist thinking – she believes lizard men control the world, she speaks like a drag queen, and she harbours a Star Wars obsession. Manager BJ conducts herself with an almost martial pride – giving inspirational speeches, slipping cake mix into the cornbread to make it more appealing, and training to achieve her dream of making it on the commercial wrestling stage. Dreams are thwarted in this place – except perhaps for Sony; his unaffected desires, whether in crafting origami penguins or in his encyclopedic knowledge of the American Civil War, throw into sharp relief the miseries inflicted on other characters by unattainable ones.
The Age
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Love, loss and found family among America's lower working class
FICTION The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Vuong Jonathan Cape, $34.99 Ocean Vuong achieved fame as a poet before his acclaimed debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, andthere's creative continuity in follow-up The Emperor of Gladness. Previously examined motifs undergo complex transformations so that it reads like the literary equivalent of a musical variation. Autobiography is grist to the mill for Vuong. His mother fled Saigon for the US, via the Philippines, when he was an infant. He was raised in Connecticut among an extended family of Vietnamese refugees. He's also openly gay. These experiences inspire but do not define his creative fiction, and if the vaunted lyricism of a particular style of American dreaming marks the opening of The Emperor of Gladness – a flashy choric invocation of a dead-end Connecticut town, its ghosts inviting suicidal 19-year-old, Hai, to escape by jumping off a bridge – it isn't long before sublime cadence and melancholy grandeur yield to a different kind of song. An old woman spies the boy in the rain, and roundly tells him: 'You can't die in front of my house, okay?' This is Grazina – a force to be reckoned with, having survived Hitler and Stalin in Lithuania during WWII, and now in a battle to preserve her independence against the onset of dementia. Hai moves in as an unofficial carer, to keep her out of a nursing home. Grim doesn't begin to cover their living conditions; the house is decrepit and built on a toxic contamination site and Grazina can't afford to feed them. So Hai lands a job (courtesy of his cousin Sony, named after the television manufacturer) at a budget restaurant chain. As Hai's friendship with Grazina grows, he bathes her, comforts her when decades-old war trauma resurfaces, and engages in role-playing historical battles with her to manage her sundowning. He reads Slaughterhouse Five and The Brothers Karamazov from her dead husband's library and, alas, stumbles across an unused bottle of serious painkillers … dire news for someone recovering from opioid addiction. At work, Hai rocks up to every shift pinned to cope with the drudgery. Genuine camaraderie and unlikely dignity are found among the motley crew who work there, despite some extreme weirdness. Long-serving Maureen evades grief in conspiracist thinking – she believes lizard men control the world, she speaks like a drag queen, and she harbours a Star Wars obsession. Manager BJ conducts herself with an almost martial pride – giving inspirational speeches, slipping cake mix into the cornbread to make it more appealing, and training to achieve her dream of making it on the commercial wrestling stage. Dreams are thwarted in this place – except perhaps for Sony; his unaffected desires, whether in crafting origami penguins or in his encyclopedic knowledge of the American Civil War, throw into sharp relief the miseries inflicted on other characters by unattainable ones.
Spectator
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Misfits unite: The Emperor of Gladness, by Ocean Vuong, reviewed
As a poet, Ocean Vuong has won every prize going. Now here's The Emperor of Gladness, his second novel. His first, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, a coming-of-age story, is currently being filmed. This latest oneis wild, unwieldy and too long. It is fiction/autofiction mixed with 19th- and 20th-century warfare, plus contemporary angst and craziness. It has one preposterous scene that you wish were true, and never has a title been so misleading. It's a book of moral, imaginative ideas with gripping stories, wonderful characters and writing that's poetic and witty. I loved it. It opens with an introduction to the rural town of East Gladness, Connecticut, its citizens 'not ambivalent to hope'. It's like a tawdry Middlemarch until you meet the main protagonist, Hai, aged 19, who's about to throw himself off a bridge. He's coaxed down by a 'kooky' old lady who spots him from her home across the river and takes him in. Grazina, 83 and Lithuanian, has dementia. Hai, a gay Vietnamese refugee, college drop-out and painkiller addict, becomes her unlikely carer. There's an echo of a children's story when, in the basement of Grazina's ramshackle house, Hai discovers the kind of library every budding writer might long for. But Vuong takes the novel beyond childhood in his exploration of the inherited trauma of war and violence. A key theme is Vuong's challenging of the idea that life without the impulse to change and improve (through work, education and marriage) is worthless. Hai and Grazina, lacking such impulse – one being too old, the other not ready – are pushed to the margins of society. As are the group of misfits whom Hai joins when he starts working at the fast-food diner, HomeMarket. Among them is Maureen, occasional performance wrestler hooked on the lizard conspiracy (underground dinosaurs feeding on human suffering) and Hai's cousin Sony, autistic, obsessed with battles, the film Gettysburg and his family's escape from Vietnam. Most dramatic and moving are the episodes when Hai joins Grazina in her dementia memories. Play-acting, he becomes a US Army Sergeant Pepper helping her escape Stalin's purges in Lithuania. The preposterous scene is the one in which Grazina's obnoxious son Lucas and a social worker arrive with a plan to put the old lady into a home. In dementia play, Sergeant Pepper and Grazina use grenades (the cruet set) and Grazina's pistol (her finger) to rout the Nazis (son and social worker), albeit temporarily. It's a terrific scene. You want to cheer. You know they won't win. Vuong has said that he wanted to 'charge' his characters with 'transformation without change'. This happens to the HomeMarket team, 'people bound by nothing but toil in a tiny kitchen' when they bond with Sony in his grief for the loss both of his real and his fantasy father. And it's profoundly there in the tenderness that develops between Grazina and Hai. All the characters find dignity and fulfilment not by their achievements or aspirations, but in caring for each other. Hey! This is a love story! And the book's title? It would be a spoiler to tell.
USA Today
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Need a new book? 10 new releases you can read right now from romance to thriller
Need a new book? 10 new releases you can read right now from romance to thriller What do a ghost-conjuring chef, a fast-food employee and a world-renowned dying artist have in common? They're the topics of some of our favorite new books from May, of course. Check out the titles we recommend this month, including new Stephen King, a swoony new romantasy bestseller and the book that Fredrik Backman said could be his last. Or, take a look at the titles we're most excited about this summer. Plus, there's still time to read for USA TODAY's Spring Book Challenge, where you could win a $100 gift card to just by filling out our bingo card. What should I read next? 10 new books from May Summer is just around the corner, and it's time to get your TBR ready for beach reading and vacations. From dystopian tales to steamy romance, here are the titles we think you should pick up at your local bookstore or library. 'The Emperor of Gladness' by Ocean Vuong 'The Emperor of Gladness' has all the poetic meditations and lyricism of Vuong's 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous,' but with a lovable cast of found family characters that practically leap off the page. In it, a young man about to commit suicide is stopped by an elderly woman with dementia. What results is an unlikely friendship, a fast-food job that reunites him with his cousin and a new supportive, quirky community. 'Aftertaste' by Daria Lavelle This dark comedy set in the culinary world follows a Ukrainian American chef who can conjure spirits of the dead by cooking their favorite foods. Haunted by the death of his father and yearning to use his powers for good, Kostya opens a restaurant where loved ones reunite over one last meal. With carefully crafted depictions of grief and mouth-watering culinary adventures, this is the perfect novel for the always hungry and for fans of 'The Bear.' 'My Friends' by Fredrik Backman Told in two timelines, Backman's heartwarming latest is about four childhood friends and one transformative summer. Their bond inspires a painting that eventually becomes, decades later, the most famous painting in the world. In the present, a teenager who cherishes that painting finds herself in unexpected ownership of the original. Her cross-country journey to learn how the artwork came to be connects surprising roads in her own life and the painting's subjects. 'Can't Get Enough' by Kennedy Ryan In 'Can't Get Enough,' ambitious, goal-oriented Hendrix Barry is thriving in most aspects of life, but caring for her aging parent means she doesn't have time for romance. But then she meets tech mogul Maverick Bell, and the one man she can't have seems to be the perfect match. 'Things in Nature Merely Grow' by Yiyun Li Writer and professor Li meditates on the loss of her two sons – both from suicide, seven years apart. Li searches for the words that might fill the loss of Vincent at age 16 in 2017 and James at age 19 in 2024. 'Things In Nature Merely Grow' is less of a book about grief and more a tribute to radical acceptance and the lasting power of memory. 'Immaculate Conception' by Ling Ling Huang Twisty dystopian horror 'Immaculate Conception' follows art students whose work and study are upended by artificial intelligence. Grappling with her artistic purpose and jealous of her friend Mathilde's global success, protagonist Enka comes across a new technology that would let her enter Mathilde's mind, inextricably linking the co-dependent friends. 'Never Flinch' by Stephen King King deviates from his terrifying horror to pen a detective novel in 'Never Flinch.' This mystery thriller puts beloved character Holly Gibney at the forefront, now working for a celebrity women's rights activist whose lecture tour is under threat by a violent mystery assailant. At the same time, Holly helps her police detective friend with a serial killer on a revenge mission. 'Along Came Amor' by Alexis Daria This steamy romance is the third and final installment of Daria's 'Primas of Power' series. When Ava Rodriguez's now ex-husband leaves her to chase dreams that don't include her, she tries to embrace her new singleness in a one-night stand with Roman Vázquez. Type-A Roman is laser-focused on building his empire, so he initially agrees to her no-strings-attached, no-feelings situationship. That comes crashing when the pair run into each other at Ava's family function. 'Shield of Sparrows' by Devney Perry This new romantasy series, billed for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, sees a forgotten princess changing her fate. She's never meant to rule, only to obey her father. But after an encounter with a legendary monster hunter and a prince upends her life, she realizes she can make her own rules, becoming the warrior she was meant to be. 'How to Be Well' by Amy Larocca Everyone knows a 'well woman' – the spiritual, skincare aficionado who is just one cog in the machine of the multibillion-dollar wellness industry. Journalist Larocca touches on her own experience getting sucked into wellness culture before ripping back the curtain at the science behind it, as well as the standards of American womanhood driving the profits. Support AAPI authors all year: 10 new books by Asian authors to read Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@
CBS News
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Oprah Winfrey unveils "The Emperor of Gladness" as her latest book club pick
Oprah Winfrey reveals new book club pick: "The Emperor of Gladness" by Ocean Vuong Oprah Winfrey unveiled her latest book club selection Tuesday on "CBS Mornings," choosing "The Emperor of Gladness" by acclaimed author and poet Ocean Vuong. During the exclusive announcement, Winfrey described the novel as containing "some of the most beautiful writing I've experienced in my lifetime," and praised Vuong's ability to "capture the essence of just ordinary people." "When I tell everybody, would you just read the first chapter. And if you read the first chapter, you're gonna be hooked," Winfrey said. The novel opens with the line, "The hardest thing in the world is to live only once," and follows 19-year-old Hai who develops a profound connection with Grazina, an elderly widow suffering from dementia. In the interview, Vuong shared that the story was inspired by personal experience, noting that suicide is "a very personal thing" following his uncle's death by suicide in 2012. Rather than focusing solely on the moment of crisis, Vuong said he wanted to explore what happens after. "Often in stories or news segments, we have the suicide at the edge of the bridge. And then when they come off that bridge, and God willing they do, we all clap. Everything's back to normal," Vuong said. "But I've always thought what's happened for that person on day two of that decision. Day three, day 20. Because their life still is in shambles." The author said the unlikely bond between his main characters, noting that "both the young people and the very old have been pushed on the margins" of society, creating "masses amount of loneliness on both sides of that age spectrum." There is also a personal connection between Winfrey and Vuong, who shared that his mother, a nail salon worker in Connecticut, regularly watched "The Oprah Show." Vuong said as a child, he watched women feel empowered through reading. When asked what his late mother would think of his book being selected for Oprah's Book Club, Vuong said it would be the only literary achievement she would have fully recognized, saying "This is the only thing that would be legible to her." "I hope she's proud of me. I hope she's seeing me somewhere," Vuong said. Vuong's previous work includes the bestselling novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" and the poetry collection "Time Is a Mother." "The Emperor of Gladness" is on sale now.
