Скачать или смотреть Bookies! No Spoiler Book Review: The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong. What Went Wrong Here?

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong is lovely in its prose. Vuong excels at expressing the heartfelt relationship between Hai, a Vietnamese-American immigrant and Grazina, a Lithuanian immigrant and WW2 refugee. The prose is lush, descriptive and emotive.

However ...

At some point a character study must compel some small modicum of interest beyond the characters themselves. Every time I sat down with this novel, I hoped that the story would advance in some compelling way. Instead it aimlessly meanders until it simply concludes. The characters are essentially left where they started because there is no pivot point whereby the plot and/or the characters themselves advance.

A novel should urge you to read further ... to advance the story. You should look forward to setting all other distractions aside because the novel itself is beckoning you to come, sit, read, and advance. Unfortunately, that just didn't happen for me.

As such, the Bookies! rating for this novel is 3.25 starts out of 5. I hoped for something better. Notwithstanding, the rating is not suggesting that you shouldn't read the novel. If you can get it on a library loan or at a reasonable price, do so.

The bottom line is that no two persons read the same novel. Perhaps my experience will be different that your own. However, I've sat on this review for some time. My hopes and aspirations for this novel should not compel me to rate it higher. That wouldn't be honest, and it wouldn't help you, the viewer of this Bookies! video review.

For me, the novel has to remain at 3.25 stars.

Bear

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