On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

This is a book in search of a plot.  From its inauspicious beginning onward, I just wanted to get it over with.  The book’s format is that of a letter from the Vietnamese-American narrator to his illiterate mother, and that letter is rife with poetry, as the author is himself a poet.  However, I am a fan of fiction—not poetry.  Plus, I found nothing to endear me to the narrator other than the fact that he is abused by his mentally ill mother.  He discovers at an early age that he is gay and strikes up a relationship with Trevor, whose home life is just as awful as the narrator’s.  If ever there were a book with a central theme of identity, this is it, but actually I felt that Trevor and the narrator’s mother were both more compelling characters than the narrator.  Plus, the storyline, such as it is, is profoundly grim, with rare moments of beauty or joy, such as scaling a fence next to the freeway to pick wildflowers.  I mean, really, that’s about as joyful as it gets.  The most disturbing aspect of this novel is the story of Trevor’s opioid addiction that stemmed from a sprained ankle.  The narrator lambasts Purdue Pharma for destroying this boy’s life, and I’m with him on this point.  The upside is that, since the author voices his rage in a novel, I actually read it.  Not that I haven’t read or heard about the opioid crisis in the news, but the author here puts a face, albeit fictional, to the many innocent victims.  And I can’t even bear to mention what happens to the macaque in the misguided interest of male virility.  This book drives home the stark reality of how humanity can often be all too inhumane.