Ocean Vuong
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong is a semi-autobiographical novel about a nineteen-year-old gay Vietnamese-American son of a refugee mother.
The novel opens with Hai, the protagonist, standing on a bridge’s ledge over a river in Connecticut, debating whether to jump. His decision is thwarted when an elderly woman calls out to him from her home overlooking the river. He sees her struggling against the wind while putting up laundry on her porch. She orders Hai to stop whatever he is thinking of doing and demands he come to her house. Embarrassed, Hai struggles to find an excuse to explain his presence on the ledge. He finds himself walking to her home where he meets Grazina, an eighty-two-year-old Lithuanian refugee in the final stages of dementia.
Grazina invites Hai to move in with her in exchange for which he lives rent-free, makes sure she takes all her medications, and becomes her caregiver. Hai agrees. The two live comfortably together, accommodating one another and establishing a close bond. Hai carefully monitors Grazina’s medications, picks up their groceries, prepares dinner, and even bathes her. Grazina experiences bouts of confusion and hallucinations, frequently mistaking reality with memories of her home in Lithuania sixty years ago. Hai indulges her hallucinations by playing the role of a soldier who is helping her escape capture from German troops. He gently steers her back to reality when he senses she is ready to return. Meanwhile, he is addicted to pain killers, deceiving his mother into believing he is in Boston studying to get his medical degree.
A second thread opens when Hai gets a job working at a local chain restaurant. He meets the motley crew of employees, each of whom is on the fringes of society for one reason or another. This unlikely crew of people, who seemingly have little in common other than their place of employment, form a surprisingly strong community of supportive individuals who go out of their way to help one another.
Although the novel has some very moving passages illustrating compassion and generosity toward those in need, a lot of the description feels like overkill. The language fluctuates between the needlessly flowery or the pedestrian. There is a particularly gruesome section set in a pig abattoir choke full of unnecessarily graphic detail. Some of the chapters seem out of sequence and out of context, contributing little to the overall narrative and leaving one wondering why they are in there in the first place.
In short, the novel suffers from too much going on, too many distractions, and too many sections that seemed to lead nowhere. It’s a case of losing sight of the wood for the trees.