The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong is about Hai—a 19-year-old college dropout standing on a bridge, ready to vanish. But then, he gets saved by an 82-year-old woman with dementia, why she helped him??
Well let’s dive in the book. but if you are into Fiction novels, and want a similar read you can checkout story at Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
“An elderly widow succumbing to dementia, convinces him to take another path. Out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. The unlikely pair develops a nice bond, one built on empathy and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to his family, and a community at the brink.”
Book Review: The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
What if your redemption arc started at a sad little chain restaurant in Connecticut?
This book is wild— becoz it is soft in the loudest book on Earth. Hai becomes Grazina’s in-home caregiver, pretending to be her wartime hero while barely surviving his own battles.
And somehow, this whole unlikely crew—Hai, Grazina, and Sony, his war-film-obsessed cousin—ends up orbiting around a HomeMarket. Honestly, where else do the forgotten souls of capitalism go?
But wait—did Vuong really make a chain restaurant holy ground? Yes, he did.
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He writes about food service workers like they’re priests of survival. About dementia like it’s a house you keep getting locked out of. About trauma not as an event, but as an inherited condition—passed down things like through war, immigration, addiction, and the American Dream.
But hey, it’s not perfect. Some parts get so abstract they float off —like, sir, I came here for feelings, not a dissertation. And the plot? A bit meandering. There’s emotional payoff, sure, but also long stretches where I felt like Hai’s van: moving, but lost.
This isn’t just a novel. It’s a symphony of outsiders, a soft rebellion against the idea that only “successful” lives matter.
| Genre | Fiction |
| Number of Pages | 416 pages |
| My Rating | 4.0⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| Release Date | May 13, 2025 |
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong Summary (Spoilers)
Nineteen-year-old Hai is ready to be done. A college dropout, painkiller addict, and all-around ghost of a boy, he climbs up a bridge in East Gladness, Connecticut—ready to step out of life’s frame entirely.
“To be alive and try to be a decent person, and not turn it into anything big or grand, that’s the hardest thing of all.”
Enter Grazina: 82 years old, slipping into dementia, and somehow still sharp enough to talk him down with a story about escaping Stalin. Does she know where (or when) she is? Not really. But she knows Hai shouldn’t jump.
Hai becomes her caretaker—mostly because the town is too tired to stop him—and they form a strange, tender alliance. Hai pretends to be a soldier helping her flee the Soviet regime. Grazina believes him. It’s heartbreaking. It’s healing. It’s weirdly hilarious. And it works.
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Meanwhile, Hai gets a job at HomeMarket, a casual restro that is shown as America’s depiction (metaphor). He works with Sony, his Civil War reenactor cousin with too many opinions on Gettysburg. They togetherly passes through minimum wage, side-hustles, and late-night existentialism in the walk-in freezer.
The Emperor of Gladness Ending Spoilers:
Hai lies to his mother about being in med school. He loses himself in Grazina’s delusions and slowly begins to see his own fractured past: his family fleeing Vietnam, his father’s silence, his own numbing pain. And then Grazina dies—quietly, in her sleep. No grand goodbye. No cinematic final words. Just absence.
Hai doesn’t go back to the bridge. Instead, he buries her in the backyard like she wanted (of course), quits HomeMarket, and buys a van. He and Sony drive west—no destination, just a direction. Maybe that’s enough.
So, does Hai “get better”? No. But he keeps going.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s the point. Not triumph. Not transcendence. Just motion. Just survival with a pulse.
Quotes:
“He had no history because one was not required of him, and having no history also meant having no sadness.”
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Final Verdict?
But all in all, a big Yes! The prose? Devastatingly beautiful. You’ll laugh. You’ll hurt. You’ll question whether working for tips while grieving your past qualifies as a religious experience (spoiler: it does).
Who should read it:
- Fans of poetic prose that punches you in the gut mid-sentence.
- If you are anyone who finds intergenerational friendships hopeful
- If you are fans of authors like Toni Morrison, Hanya Yanagihara, or Akwaeke Emezi.
- Those who believe literature should honor lives. ( not always in traditional way)
Books like The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong:
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
- The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
- The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff
About the Author:
Ocean Vuong is NY Time bestselling author of the On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. He is also famous for his poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds.
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