Archive for the ‘Penguin Press’ Tag
College dropout and drug addict Hai, is about to jump off a bridge in East Gladness, Conn., when he’s talked down by Grazina, an elderly widow, who then invites him into her nearby, rundown home. This is the beginning of Ocean Vuong’s novel The Emperor of Gladness. What ensues is a look at how creating a family can evolve from unlikely relationships.
Hai has lied to his Vietnamese mother about still being in school and, among other things, his sexuality. In fact, he elaborates telling her he’s in medical school. As his friendship with Grazina evolves, he becomes her unofficial caretaker, ensuring she talks her medications and helping her as she relives traumatic flashbacks from when she escaped the war in Lithuania. Nonetheless, she sinks deeper into dementia.
When it becomes clear the pair needs money, he joins his cousin Sony, like the electronics brand, who works in a fast casual restaurant with a group of misfits.
The characters, like the novel itself, are both sad and funny through their distinct personality quirks. Their desperateness is palpable. Sony, who is otherwise not exceptionally bright, is a Civil War savant. Sonny’s mother is in jail and he believes his father is living in Maine.
Vuong’s descriptions are vivid but occasionally longwinded. Despite the author’s colorful details, it’s easy to visualize the desolate town of East Gladness.
Hai’s co-workers at the restaurant are equally adrift, each with their own feelings of loneliness while they unknowingly search for connections.
The Emperor of Gladness
Four Bookmarks
Penguin Press, 2025
402 pages
*This review was written in 2018. I thought I’d posted it, but turns out it’d been languishing in my Documents folder all this time. At least I remembered I’d read the book before watching the first episode on Hulu….
The way families communicate with each other and the rest of the world is at the heart of Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. This novel falls into the can’t-put-it-down category. The characters are haunting in their embodiment of what they believe is right and wrong. When those lines are blurred, they become even more real – like people we know, or like the people we are.
Mia Warren and her teenage daughter Pearl arrive in the upscale, planned community of Shaker Heights, Ohio. They rent an apartment owned by Elena Richardson, the mother four high school-aged children. Elena, who’s mostly referred to by the author as Mrs. Richardson, has lived her life as if following a recipe: step-by-step never considering substitutions or variations. Mia is an artist. She and Pearl move from place to place with the regularity of seasons. Mia promises Pearl this time, they’ll settle down.
That the families become intertwined is no surprise. The narrative opens with the Richardson’s manor-like home burning to the ground. Like bookends, this is where things wrap up.
Pearl and Moody Richardson become best friends. These are like-minded, intelligent kids who don’t quite fit in with the popular crowd like Moody’s older brother and sister. There’s also his troubled sister, Izzy, adding to the dynamics.
Little Fires Everywhere
Four-and-a-half bookmarks
Penguin Press, 2017
338 pages
The Blue Page Special 