'The Emperor of Gladness' by Ocean Vuong
- Reed
- Jun 29
- 3 min read
Author: Ocean Vuong
Rating: B+
Vibe: Understated grief, fast-food solidarity, and the quiet weight of unspoken love
Quick Take: Vuong's poetic restraint creates something beautiful and authentic—but that same restraint might keep you at arm's length from the emotional core you're craving.satisfying ways.
Ocean Vuong's second novel opens with nineteen-year-old Hai standing on a bridge in the rain, ready to jump. What pulls him back isn't a grand intervention but the voice of Grazina, an elderly Lithuanian widow with dementia who mistakes him for someone else. What follows is a year in the life of an unlikely pair—a gay Vietnamese American college dropout and an immigrant widow—as they navigate survival in post-industrial Connecticut.
The Emperor of Gladness is a book that trusts you to read between the lines, and Vuong's choice to keep Hai's gayness as what one reviewer called a "lingering secret" feels deeply intentional. We learn about his sexuality not through declaration but through absence, through the weight of what's not said about his friend who died of an overdose. That loss—which feels unmistakably like the loss of a lover—becomes the gravitational center of everything: why Hai dropped out of college, why he can't face his mother, why pills became a refuge. It's a grief so consuming he can't even name it, which feels authentic to a certain kind of gay experience—the way we sometimes protect our deepest losses by keeping them wordless.
What Works
The working-class authenticity here is remarkable. Hai's job at HomeMarket, a fast-casual chain restaurant, brings together a cast of characters that will be immediately recognizable to anyone who's worked food service. Vuong captures the particular solidarity and exhaustion of that world—the way coworkers become family not through choice but through necessity, the way you learn someone's life story during a cigarette break, the way minimum wage feels like both survival and slow suffocation. Having worked at IHOP in college, I found myself nodding at the accuracy of these workplace dynamics.
Vuong's prose remains as lyrical as ever, but it's his restraint that impresses most. This isn't emotional manipulation—it's careful observation. The characters find dignity in small gestures, in continuing rather than in being saved.
What Doesn't Quite Land
That same restraint, though, can feel like a barrier. Vuong's understated approach is clearly a stylistic choice—and one that serves his artistic vision—but it might leave you wanting more emotional access to Hai's inner life. The grief that drives the entire novel remains so carefully contained that it sometimes feels more observed than felt. This isn't to say the book should be louder or more sentimental, but there's something about the consistent distance that can make you feel like you're watching the story through glass.
The relationship between Hai and Grazina works, but it occasionally strains credibility in the way that literary conceits sometimes do. Their bond develops beautifully, but the setup feels a touch convenient—two damaged people finding each other across generational and cultural divides in ways that serve the narrative more than they emerge from character.
Final Take
The Emperor of Gladness is the kind of book that makes you respect the craft even when you don't fully lose yourself in the story. Vuong's writing remains gorgeous, his ear for working-class dialogue is impeccable, and his understanding of how grief moves through a body feels lived-in and true. But his commitment to understatement—while artistically admirable—creates a reading experience that feels more observed than inhabited.
This isn't a criticism of what Vuong set out to do; it's an acknowledgment that what he does may not be what every reader is looking for. If you loved the poetic restraint of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, you'll likely find this evolution of his style rewarding. If you're looking for something that grabs you by the collar and doesn't let go, you might find yourself admiring from a distance.
The book succeeds most when it's simply documenting the texture of survival—the rhythm of a restaurant shift, the small kindnesses between people who have little to give, the way love can exist without ever being named. In those moments, Vuong's restraint becomes its own form of tenderness.
