海角大神

In 2019, Ocean Vuong, an award-winning Vietnamese American poet, stunned readers with his first novel. 鈥淥n Earth We鈥檙e Briefly Gorgeous鈥� was a brutal and tender coming-of-age story about surviving the aftermath of political and domestic trauma, written in the form of a son鈥檚 letter to his illiterate mother. In his unremittingly gorgeous second novel, 鈥淭he Emperor of Gladness,鈥� Vuong again deftly walks a tightrope between despair and hope, heartache and love.

For Vuong, fiction is a moral instrument, and he plays it with the practiced hand of a virtuoso. At the heart of his new novel is a bookish 19-year-old Vietnamese American 鈥渋n the midnight of his childhood and a lifetime from first light.鈥�

We meet Hai at a low point. Freshly out of drug rehab, he feels he鈥檚 鈥渞un out of paths to take, out of ways to salvage his failures.鈥� He doesn鈥檛 want to further disappoint his mother 鈥� a hardworking manicurist who thinks he鈥檚 studying medicine 鈥� and so he reasons, from atop a bridge, that there鈥檚 no shame 鈥渋n losing yourself to something as natural as gravity.鈥�

Hai doesn鈥檛 jump, and he eventually finds a measure of relief in unexpected bonds forged with strangers, who become like family.

The first is with Grazina Vitkus, an 80-something World War II refugee from Lithuania who talks him down from the ledge and offers him shelter in her decrepit riverside house. Grazina misinterprets his name and calls him Labas, which is Lithuanian for 鈥渉ello.鈥� Hai later tells her that his name means 鈥渟ea鈥� in Vietnamese, which of course evokes the author鈥檚 first name, Ocean.

Hai steps easily into a caregiving role: He picks up Grazina鈥檚 groceries (including her favorite frozen Salisbury steak dinners); he administers medications for her progressive dementia; he bathes her. When Grazina awakens with night terrors that carry her back to her teens in 1944 in Lithuania, which was under siege from both Nazis and Soviets, Hai joins in her dreamworld 鈥� a trick he learned while caring for his grandmother who had schizophrenia. Fueled by what little he knows about the war from popular culture, he pretends to be an American infantryman named Sergeant Pepper who guides her to safety. By day, he anchors her in 2009 by repeatedly asking who the president is.

Hai finds another family in his co-workers at HomeMarket, the fast-food restaurant where the question of the hour, of every hour, is 鈥淗ow can I help you?鈥� Vuong鈥檚 sympathetic portraits of this crew, each with their own problems 鈥� medical debts, a sister in rehab, a mother in prison 鈥� recall the big-box store workers in Adelle Waldman鈥檚 鈥淗elp Wanted.鈥� Here, too, people who barely eke a living from their minimum-wage jobs band together to help each other, often by accompanying co-workers on far-fetched crusades.

鈥淭he Emperor of Gladness鈥� is set in fictional East Gladness, Connecticut, 12 miles outside of Hartford. Vuong vividly evokes the beauty of the depressed, postindustrial town in scene-setting descriptions that channel Thornton Wilder鈥檚 鈥淥ur Town.鈥� Vuong鈥檚 narrator tells us: 鈥淥ur town is raised up from a scab of land along a river in New England.鈥� Earlier, the narrator says, 鈥淢ornings, the light rinses this place the shade of oatmeal.鈥� He describes a 鈥渄ried-up brook whose memory of water never reached this century,鈥� and a wooden sign 鈥渞ubbed to braille by wind.鈥� And he urges us to 鈥淟ook how the birches, blackened all night by starlings, shatter when dawn鈥檚 first sparks touch their beaks.鈥�

We鈥檙e told that no one stops in East Gladness, but readers will be stopped in their tracks by Vuong鈥檚 imagery: 鈥淲e are the blur in the windows of your trains and minivans, your Greyhounds, our faces mangled by wind and speed like castaway Munch paintings,鈥� he writes. 鈥淲e live on the edges but die in the heart of the state. We pay taxes on every check to stand on the sinking banks of a river that becomes the morgue of our dreams.鈥�

I had to read these pages several times before I was ready to move on.

But Vuong keeps his book flowing, like the river, like the traffic. There鈥檚 heartache aplenty, and a troubling ending 鈥� but also, amazingly, hijinks and humor, including Grazina鈥檚 belated realization that Hai is what she calls a 鈥渓iggabit鈥� 鈥� LGBT.

But it鈥檚 the moments of tenderness you鈥檒l remember, such as when Hai accompanies his Civil War-obsessed younger cousin, Sony, to therapy appointments and on prison visits to see his mother. Or when, after one of Grazina鈥檚 nightmares, 鈥淸Hai] reached over, across the half century between them, and cleared the stray hairs from her damp face.鈥�

Life lessons begin with the novel鈥檚 first line: 鈥淭he hardest thing in the world is to live only once.鈥� Grazina has another idea: 鈥淭o be alive and try to be a decent person, and not turn it into anything big or grand, that鈥檚 the hardest thing of all.鈥� Vuong borrows a line from Fyodor Dostoyevsky鈥檚 鈥淭he Brothers Karamazov鈥� 鈥� one of the worn paperbacks Hai picks up in Grazina鈥檚 basement 鈥� to bring home his point: 鈥淏ut don鈥檛 be afraid of life,鈥� Hai鈥檚 mother tells her drug-addled, dissembling son. 鈥淟ife is good when you do good things for each other.鈥�