Cleanness

October 15, 2019
Greenwell depicts the emotionally haunted life of an expatriate American teacher in Sofia, Bulgaria--who seems to be the same unnamed character who narrated his highly praised debut novel, What Belongs to You (2016). At the heart of that last novel was Mitko, a gay hustler who fueled the narrator's pained desire, then disgust, and ultimately empathy, but he doesn't appear here. The narrator pushes more sexual boundaries this time, and Greenwell admirably pushes them too by depicting those desires with an unflinching frankness. Sadomasochism, unprotected sex, the narrator's voyeuristic attraction to one of his students: They are all elements of the story, portrayed in Greenwell's precise, elegant style. The narrator's experience seems to align with Greenwell's; the writer has acknowledged the autofictional nature of his writing. Depictions of rough sex bookend the novel, but it's the narrator's relationship with Portuguese student R., who appeared briefly in What Belongs to You, that occupies most of Greenwell's attention. Both marooned in Sofia, the men are happy together until they acknowledge the futilities both of staying in Bulgaria and in a long-distance relationship. One of Greenwell's talents is making everyday occurrences feel dramatic and full of ambivalence and nuance, but the scenes featuring the relationship at the heart of the novel suffer a bit in comparison to the dramatic sex depicted in other sections. Still, the simple beauty of the writing is something to behold. Here he is evoking a wind from Africa that assaults Sofia: "There was something almost malevolent about it, as if it were an intelligence, or at least an intention, carrying off whatever wasn't secure, worrying every loose edge." Brave and beautiful.

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October 21, 2019
A young American teacher’s reckonings with intimacy and alienation compose the through line of Greenwell’s elegant and melancholy volume (after What Belongs to You). Nine stories track the unnamed narrator, who teaches literature in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. Documenting the narrator’s relationship with R., a Portuguese university student, and its dissolution, the stories are touchstones in his emotional development, from an attempt to shepherd a student through the crisis of first love in “Mentor,” to an encounter with homophobia in the midst of an outpouring of national solidarity in “Decent People.” As the teacher’s hopes of a life with R. fade, he returns to sex with men he meets online, which proves both dangerous, as in the chilling “Gospodar,” and revelatory, as in his encounter with the self-abnegation of the young man he calls Svetcheto, “Little Saint.” Unresolved regarding his own character, “how little sense of myself I have, how there was no end to what I could want or to the punishment I would seek,” the narrator struggles to guide the young people he teaches, conscious of the chasm of experience and expectation between them. Greenwell writes about sex as a mercurial series of emotional states and is lyrical and precise in his descriptions of desires and motivations he suggests are not subject to control or understanding. This is a piercingly observant and meticulously reflective narrative. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners.

Starred review from December 1, 2019
Greenwell's second novel overlaps with and ventures beyond his lauded debut, What Belongs to You (2016), filling in the world that Mitko, the narrator's sometimes-lover in that book, drifted into and out of. An American teaching high school in Sofia, Bulgaria, the narrator follows city protests calling for the government's resignation while preparing to return to his home country. Before he leaves, though, he revisits his great love with R., a relationship introduced off-scene in What Belongs to You. It began, readers now learn, shortly before a season of "almost malevolent," inescapable winds, and introduced the narrator to a sort of joy and tenderness he was surprised, at first, to want. The telescoping time line of this novel is more like a parabolic sequence of vignettes; surrounding the story of R. are the narrator's sexual encounters far removed from those with R.; his coping with love's dissolution; and his charged interactions with students and former students. Greenwell's writing on language, desire, and sex in all their complex choreography vibrates with intensity, reading like brainwaves and heartbeats as much as words. Concerned with intimacy, its performance, and the inevitability of becoming and being oneself, this is in every way an enriching, deepening follow-up.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2019

Greenwell's What Belongs to You won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year and was long-listed for the National Book Award, so pay attention to this new work. In Sofia, Bulgaria, as protestors swarm the streets, an American teacher preparing to leave after many years recalls significant events--e.g., a queer student's confession evoking his own first love--which helps him understand how we find ourselves, our beloveds, and our place in the world.

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