The Emperor of Gladness – Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong’s latest novel, “The Emperor of Gladness,” opens with a storm and a crisis.
Nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in East Gladness, Connecticut — another of the author’s haunted towns weighed down by history — contemplating suicide. Across the river, an elderly Lithuanian widow named Grazina creates a ruse in an attempt to stop him.
If you’ve read Vuong before, you might brace yourself for impending emotional devastation. But while the rain-soaked metaphor of two lives adrift sets the tone, this is ultimately a quieter, more generous book than his past work: sometimes funny, often tender and, frequently, engrossing.
Hai and Grazina’s meeting is not exactly a meet-cute, but it’s the moment everything changes for both of them. Hai becomes her caretaker almost by accident, and their intergenerational bond drives much of the novel’s emotional core. Through shared meals, pill bottles and stories both real and imagined, they grow to know — and need — each other.
This isn’t a novel about big revelations rather small salvations. Vuong is most alive when writing about the overlooked: wage workers, addicts, sex workers — people navigating the edges of survival, especially in this Great Recession setting.
The strongest sections are set at Home Market, a Boston Market–style restaurant where Hai finds belonging. These chapters crackle with energy: funny, grounded and strangely joyful. If you’ve worked in food service, you’ll recognize the rhythms – the weird rituals, the trench-war camaraderie and the odd pride in being the “third-best Home Market in the Northeast.”
Each coworker at Home Market is given a personality. Sony, Hai’s neurodivergent cousin with a Confederate fixation and a good heart; BJ, the wannabe wrestler-turned-manager; Russia, whose unfortunate Bugs Bunny tattoo is better left undescribed; and Maureen, a grieving mother and committed conspiracy theorist. These people could’ve been background characters, but here they’re given space to be fully human.
That’s what this novel does best: it notices. The details are tactile, sometimes almost too vivid (Chapter 13, featuring a hog slaughter, is not for the faint of heart). But that’s part of the magic. The writing doesn’t rush to explain itself, but if you’re patient, there are several moments of quiet, relatable brilliance.
There are occasional narrative detours — specifically dream sequences and poetic reveries — but for the most part, the book reins itself in. Compared to “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” this is a more grounded, traditionally structured novel, and it’s likely to reach a broader audience because of it. That’s not a criticism. If anything, it’s evidence of Vuong’s growth as a storyteller. This time, he’s built a whole world, not just a single voice.
Still, it’s not without flaws. The early chapters feel scattered, and not in a way that seems intentional. While the novel juggles several narrative threads — Hai’s addiction, his fabricated academic life, Grazina’s decline and Sony’s grief — not all are equally compelling. The estrangement from Hai’s mother never quite holds. The idea that they live in the same small town but never cross paths strains believability, despite the author’s attempts to write around it.
After so much investment in Hai’s emotional arc, the ending lands with a thud. He’s left in a literal dumpster, lying to his mother on the phone. It’s an ambiguous closing that feels less like a bold artistic choice and more like a story that ran out of steam. We get glimpses into the futures of side characters, but Hai – our anchor – is left hanging. I didn’t need a happy ending. I just needed an ending.
That said, “The Emperor of Gladness” is full of life.
There’s that brutal hog farm scene (seriously, skip the back half of Chapter 13 if you’d like to keep eating meat), and an offbeat road trip to Vermont that gives the Home Market crew their “Little Miss Sunshine” moment. There’s humor, warmth and unexpected grace in the unlikeliest places. Plus there’s earnest attention to how we form bonds in liminal spaces – through work, caregiving and grief.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated by James Aaron Oh, who does an admirable job voicing a wide range of characters and accents — Lithuanian, Vietnamese, New England, Southern and more. His pacing keeps things grounded, though his take on Maureen veers a little too cartoonish. Still, it’s a great way to experience a novel that can sometimes feel dense.
If you asked me what this is about, I’m not sure I could tell you. It has several subplots, but no single throughline, and maybe that’s the point. This is a book about transient relationships — the people who find you when you’re at your lowest, who don’t fix you but show up anyway.
In the end, this is a novel I respected more than I loved, but I did love parts of it. It’s messy and sometimes meandering but maybe, for a book about second chances, that’s enough.
Rating (story): 4/5 stars
Rating (narration): 4/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: May 14 – May 20, 2025
Multi-tasking: Okay, to a point. Once you find the rhythm of the story and understand the characters – about four chapters in — you can do some light activities that still allow you to concentrate.
