Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.

To be honest, I find it really, really hard to think of this book as a novel. It read more like a collection of essays with the occasional poem thrown in, or perhaps a memoir. In some ways, it felt like reading a journal. 

I'm in awe of Ocean Vuong's raw, poetic prose; multiple parts of the book hit me really hard, especially everything related to the generational trauma of war hanging over the family, and also the author's thoughts about writing and language. I did feel like everyone but the narrator wasn't so much a character as the narrator's impression/memory/reflection of a person, an attempt to understand them from the outside. As for plot, it's... very definitely not the focus. There's a coming-of-age narrative, absolutely, but it really reads a lot like "this is something that happened, and I'm having thoughts and feelings about it, and here they are"; a collection of losses and gains and reflections upon them. Which is not bad in any way! The book is really, really good! Just... not what I usually envision when I think of novels. Then again, maybe it's just that I don't read that much literary fiction?