In Ocean Vuong's melancholy 'Emperor of Gladness,' happiness is elusive and the American Dream out of reach

Ocean Vuong’s magnificent and melancholy 2nd novel, “The Emperor of Gladness,” is some ode and reproach. It pays tribute to the quality quality to enactment with kindness toward others adjacent erstwhile filled with hopelessness. Yet despair shrouds Vuong’s characters, immigrants and different outsiders for whom the American Dream isn’t an inkling. They signifier a protective assemblage — a “circumstantial family,” arsenic Vuong has referred to them — successful which they converge arsenic low-paid workers astatine a edifice concatenation specializing successful chickenhearted and a maize breadstuff look that produces “golden, thenar sized mounds crusted with sugar.” Together, they selflessly enactment to support each different from sinking further into despondency, substance abuse, and places wherever “the ghosts ne'er leave.”

Protagonist Hai is the latest summation to their team. He is simply a Vietnamese exile whose parent and grandma brought him to the fictional municipality of East Gladness, Conn., successful the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the demolition it wrought. The municipality they turn roots successful is ironically named; from the omniscient narrator’s vantage point, New England’s quality is successful stark opposition to the community’s poorness and desperation. When we archetypal brushwood Hai, “in the midnight of his puerility and a beingness from archetypal light,” helium perches atop the King Philip’s Bridge, being pelted by rain, “as achromatic h2o churned similar chemically softened granite below.” We travel to find helium is conscionable retired of rehab but hasn’t kicked his addiction to immoderate cause helium tin bargain oregon bargain — his sole refuge from inescapable depression. We don’t initially cognize wherefore helium swings 1 limb implicit the obstruction and decides to jump, but helium is saved from that enactment by a dependable shouting from the riverbank: “Come back. Come backmost now! Jesus Mother Mary, not now, not today.”

(Penguin Press)

The 82-year-old Lithuanian pistillate who talks Hai down from the ledge is Grazina, who’s lived unsocial successful a ramshackle location by the h2o since her husband’s death, amid worsening bouts of dementia. She invites Hai in, urging him to “Go on, sit. You look similar a dunked cookie.” He has obscurity to spell since lying to his mother, pretending he’s been admitted to aesculapian schoolhouse successful Boston, though he’s ne'er graduated college. Grazina takes him in, and helium proceeds to attraction for her arsenic helium would the beloved grandma he’s precocious lost.

Through his relative Sony, who resides successful a adjacent halfway location and obsesses astir the Civil War, Hai is hired by Home Market, wherever helium scrubs counters and toilets and works the currency register. Like his colleagues, he’s paid peanuts, but the unit — led by brawny amateur wrestler B.J. and her fig two, barbecue adept Wayne — forge a close-knit enslaved that ne'er flags, adjacent erstwhile sacrifice is involved. Vuong, who worked successful a drawstring of fast-food restaurants and picked baccy earlier receiving a MacArthur grant, vividly evokes the camaraderie helium experienced, arsenic good arsenic the sights and sounds helium absorbed: “Mingling with the processed nutrient and idiosyncratic hygiene products,” helium writes, “was the garlicky, tar-ish and vinegar scent of quality work.”

None of the down-on-their-luck players successful Vuong’s repertoire acquisition reversals of fortune: There are nary “improvement arcs” that elevate them retired of their situations. As with astir radical successful existent life, their stories are not astir profound change, but astir keeping their heads supra water. This poses a daunting situation for a novelist, whose storylines truthful often beryllium connected abrupt tragedy, luck, oregon enlightenment, but Vuong, similar Hai calved successful Vietnam and raised successful Connecticut, meets the moment. He revels successful his characters’ pluck and occasional heroism. Their expectations whitethorn person been tempered — if not extinguished — by reality, but they inhabit the satellite with quiescent wisdom, and a consciousness of humor, arsenic erstwhile Sony picks up a “sickly greenish portion of something” and asks “What’s a hare-loom tomato?” BJ peers implicit his enarthrosis and retorts: “It’s erstwhile affluent radical deliberation f—-up looking things are much peculiar than mean stuff.” This is not a joyousness thrust of a novel, though determination are galore moments of joy.

Its opening pages are arsenic melodic arsenic a symphony, albeit 1 that exhorts the quality of a Citgo state presumption and the scrappy God First Beauty Salon, past juxtaposes descriptions of however autumn dissolves into winter: “As maples, poplars, and sassafras sway, the airy filters amber done their leaving leaves. Even the steeple of the boarded-up Lutheran religion grows from dove-white to day-old food by noon.” There are hundreds of specified passages passim this 400-page book, which elevates the astir prosaic of details, into hymn.

Vuong is simply a lauded writer whose paragraphs are changeable done with sentences that enthrall and often onshore with a philosopher’s contented and economy. Take the archetypal line: “The hardest happening successful the satellite is to unrecorded lone once.” How tin specified an reflection beryllium topped? And yet this is simply a caller that percolates and simmers, provoking questions astir the reader’s privilege portion prompting awe astatine the writer’s singular empathy — and his subjects’ humility. In penning this book, Vuong whitethorn person joined the ranks of an elite fewer large novelists, but his position remains rooted successful that Connecticut municipality wherever helium got his start.

Haber is simply a writer, exertion and publishing strategist. She was manager of Oprah’s Book Club and books exertion for O, the Oprah Magazine.