Garth Greenwell

In the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell expands his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desire Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song. In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves. Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell’s beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared “an instant classic” by The New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, he transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers.

Cleanness

. . . I went in out in search of feeling, I suppose, or maybe the absence of feeling. . . I imagined I had left them behind, that I had been lifted out of them, as I was in the habit of putting it to myself, into a new life. . . But we are never lifted out of such places. . . 

It was a kind of love. or what felt like love, reverence maybe, worship. . . 

. . . a tenor whose voice. . . was beautiful and light- bodied and pure, embodying my every ambition; as I listened to him I imagined the life my own voice would lead me to, scrubbed of shame.

Usually words wear out the more you use them, they become featureless, rote. . . I remembered the fear I had felt the first time I spoke them to him, weeks before, when they had all their force. . .

. . . however things turned out they would have consequence, and I was both frightened by this and gave myself over to it. . .

I was struck again by his beauty, which was offhand and accidental, with his disheveled hair and ruffled clothes, a beauty stripped of self-regard. Even though it was familiar to me I felt it as a kind of physical force. . .

. . . as if there were something in me unreachable in my own language, something I could reach only with that blunter instrument by which I too was made a blunter instrument. . . 

. . . in time, you’ll look at [these feelings] from far away. . . as if they were felt by somebody else, or felt in a dream. . . it’s precisely like waking from a dream, and like a self in a dream, the self that feels this will be incomprehensible to you. . . 

. . . at least I had found books that, even if they were always tragic, offered a certain beauty as compensation.

Kristina Bonitz

It was a habit of mine, to rush toward an ending once I thought I could see it, as if the fact of loss were easier to bear than the chance of it.

They could make a whole life, I thought, surprised to think it, these moments that filled me up with sweetness, that had changed the texture of existence for me. 

their edges were rubbed smooth by too much looking, there was nothing for my attention to catch on in them. 

But that conversation was like a cloth already wrung dry, and soon we were sitting in silence. 

I thought I saw between him and another boy in my class, the intensity with which G. sought him out and the privacy he drew about them. It was familiar to me, that intensity, a story

shame, repression, abjection, rupture. what does it mean to live in a country with no place for you, a world where you have no future? greenwell's writing is poetic, elegant, sensitive, sleazy. so special, almost surreal, to see something like this set in bulgaria and to read the texture of a queerness entrenched in a culture i experience as lost to people like me

eris

Jenny Qian

really connected to mister teacher’s wistful yearning for connection. 🪽🪽

Rosa

I loved the second part but I found the Gospodar and Little Saint chapters difficult to get through.

𓆨

huge disappointment, the debut was so much better i honestly don't see the point of writing this one

JoAnna

I loved this book! Garth Greenwell is a beautiful writer. He writes with such warmth and tenderness about human relationships, sex, and the private self. Reading his descriptions, I really enjoyed how Sofia felt tangible; I've never been but I could envision it.

Greenwell's musical background is clear in his style, and he interweaves lengthy depictions of setting, character, and internal monologue into each chapter, of which is styled like a short story. While I enjoyed his long, hypnotic sentences, at times I also found their sheer length hard to follow.

Jamie Trenholm

Laura

There's a quote from a review of Tennessee William's Memoirs that I think applies well to this novel: "I don't know if Tennessee Williams opened his heart, but he certainly opened his fly." 

Beautifully written, though at times almost uncomfortably fetishistic. It's a one-night stand of a book, best devoured in a night and then forgotten.

amy jacobowitz

Elou

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 Named one of the best books of 2020 by The New Yorker; BBC; NPR; Time ("100 Must-read Books"); Kirkus; and The Washington Post ("50 Notable Works of Fiction") In the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desire Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song. In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves. Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell’s beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared “an instant classic” by The New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, he transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers.

Miguel

Christopher Malarick

Kwan Ann Tan

Gelaine Trinidad

Neta Harris

Cullen Bounds

Andrea Rosen

Peter S

Hellboy TCR

Jacob Mishook

‘This is an exceptional work of fiction, which places Greenwell among the very best contemporary novelists’ The i Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, unrelenting winds lash the city, political protesters flood the streets with song. Amid this disquiet, a young American teacher prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home. In a reflective mood, heightened by his imminent departure, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each revealing startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit and with ourselves. Written in precise, elegant prose, Cleanness is an almost unbearably poignant book about a man whose life, like so many, has been transformed by the discovery and loss of love. Chosen as a book of the year in the New Yorker, Daily Telegraph, Observer, New York Times, BBC, TIME and Irish Times. A New York Times Notable Book of 2020. Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize.

Cleanness

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