The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong: book review
This is a book that both attempts to and succeeds at holding so much between two cupped hands. This is a novel about Hai, a nineteen-year-old boy who's dropped out of college, returned to his hometown, tried to get clean of a pill addiction and relapsed, and is lying to his mother about being in med school in Boston. But it is also a novel about East Gladness, a forgotten, under-resourced Connecticut town only remembered by its residents. This is a book about a place, that contains every person in one way or another, no matter how briefly they brush through the story. Part of this comes through in Vuong's poetic prose. While there's been much discussion of this, most of the book is straightforward. It is when sinking into the world building that Vuong lets his pen truly flow, a contrast that is also a treat. Most of his background as a poet comes through in his ability to evoke profundity from the mundanity of life without making it showy or overwrought. Life is terrible and beautiful and boring, often all at the same time, and Vuong communicates this so effortlessly.
While encompassing the town, Vuong mainly focuses on three main splits of story. There's Grazina, the elderly woman with dementia that stops Hai from jumping off the bridge in the first chapter and subsequently takes him in. Hai becomes her caretaker as her dementia progresses, and he earnestly tries to keep her tethered to reality and soothed when it slips away. There's a deeply felt bond here, part Hai filling the void that the death of his grandmother left, part looking for the maternal support he's lost in feeling he has to stay away from his mom, who living across town with no idea he's there, to protect her. On the flip side, Grazina offers him the chance to take on a protector role that is more adult, him a grounding purpose. For better or worse, they are bonded to one another as Hai struggles with his addiction and complicated family dynamics. These stretches with Grazina waffle between being deeply heartwarming and completely gut wrenching and feature long segments stuck in her haze of confusion, which are difficult to read but incredibly important to the novel, even as they made me eager to get back to Home Market.
Which brings me to the second thread, the Home Market crew. Hai goes to his cousin Sony to try to get a job at the nicest fast casual spot in East Gladness. For anyone who's ever been to a Boston Market, this chain will be instantly familiar. Hai gets the job and is immersed in this unlikely family of workers who keep the restaurant running from BJ the manager and aspiring wrestler to Wayne, who one day wants to be a real pit master like his father and grandfather, moving on from the rotisserie line, to Maureen who has bad knees and a drinking problem brought on by grief but a good heart to Russia, a teenager like Hai and Sony working to put his sister through rehab. The book is long and layered enough that each of these characters get their own complete arc and contribute to each other's journeys. At the core of this book are the unconventional shapes that family arrives in, whether through Hai's experience becoming Grazina's carer or the restaurant crew supporting one another time and time again.
Finally, Sony has a plot thread of his own. Sony is autistic and living in a group home on the special needs floor since his mother ended up in jail. Hai and his mother are estranged from Aunt Kim, so this is news to Hai when Sony brings him into the quest to find enough money to bail his mother out of jail. Making $7.15 an hour, $5,000 for the bail is a long way away. Through the book, Hai remembers life with Sony and Aunt Kim before the falling out, when their grandmother was alive. There is an interesting constellation here that speaks to the power of family like the other threads, but unlike the unconventional families in the novel, the blood relations have much darker shades to their connections. Everyone is lying to one another in a misguided attempt to protect another person. There's real pain there. But there's also loyalty in this younger generation as Hai and Sony learn how to support one another.
All of these threads weave together in a beautiful tapestry of a novel. Interestingly, Vuong presents many unspoken questions at the outset, and while he answers the majority of them as the story unfolds, there are some threads that are left to dangle in a way that will leave me thinking about the novel for a long time afterwards. It is a book that goes many places and that requires the reader to be patient and curious and openhearted, but the reader is deeply rewarded for that investment. It's a world I felt deeply embedded inside of and one I felt it was a priority to return to each day. The Home Market staff reminded me of the unlikely friendships that formed in the customer service jobs I've worked and pulled at my heart strings. I appreciate how Vuong just lets everything be as it is, creating a sense of a full s
tory without pressing his thumb on the scales. Everything just is. It is a portrait of life. It is bleak. Many problems are unsolved, but it would be wrong if the complications immediately evaporated because the book was coming to an end. Vuong seems determined to be honest to life while not leaving readers in total despair. There is hope and comfort laced through the ending, in the looks forward, in the places where it makes sense.
I cried at the end of the novel. I can't remember the last time I cried over a book. While this is largely to the credit of the writing, it also comes down to the reality that Vuong closes the book with the words that I needed to hear. That being an adult seems really huge and overwhelming right now. And it will get smaller. But it being so big is also a gift, if you can take it. That sometimes even when it hurts like hell to let go, that's what has to happen. Life keeps moving. That has to be okay.
Overall: 4.5
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