What do readers think of The Emperor of Gladness?

This is a profound book, albeit highly disturbing, about the love and conflict, addictions and deceptions that bind together families who are struggling to survive on very little money, very little education, and very few community resources. These are people who are truly on the forgotten fringes of society.

Written by American Book Award winner Ocean Vuong, this is the story of Hai (pronounced “Hi”), a 19-year-old Vietnamese-American living in the dying, post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut. It’s September 2009. Hai is lost. He has lost his sense of self and rightness. His short life has been built on lies and drugs. And now he has seemingly come to the end after telling his beloved mother a whopper of a lie that is so big, so glorious that she has found real happiness for the first time in a long time. But what he told her isn’t true. So Hai does the only thing he can think to do: Kill himself.

Just as he is about to jump off a railroad bridge into a swirling, powerful river, an 82-year-old woman living in deep poverty and neglect in the shadow of that bridge, screams at him to stop. Miraculously, he hears her and obeys her. And then she takes him in…for good. Her name is Grazina Vitkus, a widow of Lithuanian descent and the mother of two adult children from whom she is quite distant. She is suffering from advanced dementia. Because her house is so dilapidated and in such a run-down and chemically toxic area, no live-in nurse will stay long. Hai takes on that role. But money is scarce, so he gets a job at a fast-food restaurant called HomeMarket, thanks to his autistic cousin Sony who also works there. It is here in a restaurant that serves Thanksgiving dinner foods year round that Hai is fully embraced into a caring community for the first time. It is also here that he finds order, consistency, and discipline for the first time. But the big lie he told his mother and his continued dependence on drugs taints his new life with desperation and despondency as he desperately searches for a second chance.

This is a provocative and haunting work of literary fiction that is not only unsettling, but also emotionally searing. It is a dark and difficult book to read because the characters’ lives are so devastating. Even though there is a small sense of redemption and hope, the ending is just as sad and shattering as the rest of the book. Still, it’s an important novel with a profound and relevant message.