There are some books you pick up with intention, and then there are books that pick you. For me, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was a little bit of both. I found it sitting at my safe space — the Krishna Curve Crossword — a.k.a. my comfort place where caffeine, aesthetic books, and occasional emotional breakdowns come together for me.
Back in October 2024, I bought the book for a book club meet (bless my social self for trying). But the universe had other plans. I got too caught up in another book I was reading and abandoned Vuong’s masterpiece for a few months. Fast forward to January 2025, I picked it up again, this time without external motivation, but with a quiet need for something poetic and soul-stirring. I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into.
Reading this book felt like being hugged and punched by a poem at the same time. Vuong’s writing is not just lyrical — it’s straight-up like a flowing river. Every line reads like it was meant for a late-night journal entry written while overthinking your whole existence. It didn’t confuse me, but it did make me pause. A lot. And stare into blank spaces while re-evaluating life. Fun times.
The story, written as a letter from Little Dog to his mother, unfolds in fragments. It doesn’t follow a straight line, and that’s kind of the beauty of it. It’s tender, raw, and deeply personal — the kind of book that doesn’t tell you how to feel but instead sits with you as you feel… everything.
What hit me the hardest was grief. Not just the big, obvious kind, but the quieter versions — the grief of unspoken words, of cultural gaps, of wanting connection but not knowing how to bridge the distance. I found myself relating to Little Dog in a surprising way. No, I didn’t share his trauma, but I did understand the longing for connection with a parent who is there but not fully there. As a single child of two working parents, I know what it’s like to want someone to sit beside you and hear about your random, pointless day — and for them to not have the bandwidth to do it on some difficult days. I’m not saying that it’s the same experience, but it’s definitely an interpretation of my personal experience of longing for my parent’s presence on difficult days.
There were so many lines I underlined and whispered “ouch” at. Honestly, I could do an entire post on just the quotes that made me stop breathing for a second. (And I just might.) But the one thing that lingered even after I closed the book was… numbness. Not in a bad way. Just the kind of numbness that comes after you’ve cried all the tears internally and you’re too emotionally tired to process any more.
Did I cry? No. I sat there like a confused potato. Feeling everything. And understanding nothing. Which is funny, considering I like to believe I’m emotionally intelligent and self-aware. But this book? This book took all my emotional awareness and said a sassy “cute” before launching me into emotional madness.
Would I recommend it? 100% — but not to everyone. This book is for the poetry lovers, the slow readers, the feelers, the thinkers. It’s for those who enjoy sipping coffee and having a philosophical crisis on a Wednesday afternoon. It’s not a plot-heavy story, it’s an emotional excavation.
Will I reread it? Probably not. But my notes and highlights, I’ll be going back to re-read those every time I face a mini existential meltdown. This is a book I didn’t know I needed, and I’m still unsure whether I liked what I saw — but I know it mattered.
And in case you’re wondering — these are my ending thoughts:
Finished this book. Now I’m lying on my floor.
Am I okay? No.
Am I changed? Absolutely.
Did I just soul-spiral through someone else’s trauma? Yes.
Warmly,
Ritika Das @ Readablyours
