Review by New York Times Review
IN A CONTROVERSIAL 1999 New Yorker review of Alan Hollinghurst's novel "The Spell," John Updike summed up a common prejudice about gay stories: namely, that they have nothing to interest straight readers. Updike, the author of the sex romp "Couples" (among other sexually frank novels), complained that Hollinghurst's "relentlessly gay" fiction bored him because in gay stories "nothing is at stake but self-gratification." In contrast, stories with heterosexual characters "involve perpetuation of the species and the ancient, sacralized structures of the family." Essentially, Updike is asking: What's the big deal? It's just sex. Garth Greenwell's masterly debut novel, "What Belongs to You," provides a ringing answer to Updike's willfully dense question. The book is set in contemporary Bulgaria, still struggling to move on from its Communist past. Here, gay desire remains a cultural taboo, so that expressing one of the most basic of human emotions is quite a big deal, with plenty at stake beyond "self-gratification." Because the novel opens with a man cruising for sex in a public bathroom, some readers may initially be tempted to write off "What Belongs to You" as gay fiction. The cruising man in question, Greenwell's unnamed narrator, resembles the author: a gay American poet teaching abroad at a college in Sofia. Looking for sex and maybe companionship in a land where gays find one another in the shadows, the narrator encounters a small-time hustler named Mitko. Their relationship begins as sexual, then turns to something more mysterious, fraught and destabilizing to them both. It's a compliment to Greenwell's writing that the vividly written sex scenes are the least compelling aspect of this wonderful book, which is divided into three sections. The first section, "Mitko," was published as a stand-alone novella in 2011. It follows the two main characters as they go through the initial paces of their unequal relationship, complicated by the relative financial privilege of the narrator and the elusive personality of the charismatic Mitko. A 21st-century answer to Christopher Isherwood's shabbily charming Sally Bowles, Mitko veers between attracting as many male admirers as possible, in person and online, and then plaintively professing a desire to "live a normal life." Despite this dynamic character and Greenwell's dexterous prose, the plot of "Mitko" feels slightly thin. Readers may want to pull an Updike and tell the narrator: Hey, it's just sex. What's the big deal? The resounding answer comes in the next section, "A Grave," in which Greenwell powerfully expands the book's scope. Sparked by news of his estranged father's impending death, the narrator recounts several evocative vignettes of his own youthful attempts to grapple with his sexual identity in red-state Kentucky. Taken in succession, these two sections expose the process of gay shame: how a traditional upbringing conditions a sweet, innocent kid to link desire with humiliation and hiding, and then how that kid transforms into a man addicted to that connection. Why would any contemporary American gay man in his right mind move to of all places Bulgaria? Perhaps in this case because it reminds the book's hero of his old Kentucky home. In the novel's final section, "Pox," the narrator has overcome some of his internal hurdles and formed a healthier relationship with a man from Portugal called R. At the same time, he can't quite let go of Mitko - or is it that Mitko will not let go of him? Greenwell poignantly evokes the narrator's inability to resist the draw of Mitko's erratic neediness. Much (but not all) of the sexual charge of their relationship has dissipated for the narrator, yet a mysterious feeling of responsibility for Mitko's increasingly grim fate remains. Greenwell is one of several contemporary writers working in an "all over" prose style, similar to that of a Jackson Pollock abstract expressionist painting, in which all compositional details seem to be given equal weight. (Other current all-over practitioners include the literary darlings - and presumed heterosexuals - Ben Lerner and Karl Ove Knausgaard.) In these works, even the stories themselves seem barely shaped, merely lifted from the authors' lives and flung directly onto the page like paint on a Pollock canvas. Though this style has roots in the works of European writers like W.G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard and (further back) Marcel Proust, its recent resurgence feels born out of a new and different impulse, perhaps an eerie echo of the relentless, formless "I, I, I" of social media. Yet Greenwell's writing stands out from that of his "all over" contemporaries, whose language sometimes slides into blandness or cliché. By contrast, Greenwell takes more consistent care with his finely wrought words and sentences. His prose regularly delivers dazzling treasures: "How helpless desire is outside its little theater of heat." "Three long walkways extended from the beach into the sea, branching out at their ends into three separate promenades, like the arms, it seemed to me, of a snowflake as drawn by a child." "At the very moment we come into full consciousness of ourselves what we experience is leave-taking and a loss we seek the rest of our lives to restore." And he is equally memorable on up-to-the-minute concerns like online communication - on, for instance, the "symbols and abbreviations of Internet chat that make such language seem so much like a process of decay." While other writers use the all-over style somewhat indiscriminately, lavishing the same degree of attention on descriptions of morning coffee or a joint as on Big Thoughts about art or mortality, Greenwell has an instinctual feel for sharpening his focus at key moments to create depth of feeling. For instance, in the bravura opening to "A Grave," the narrator's reaction to learning that his father is dying becomes an object lesson in suffusing description of setting with a character's emotions. Perhaps for readers who share Updike's point of view on the subject, the fact of Greenwell's narrator's gayness makes his story less "universal" - as if the job of fiction were to act as a mirror, rather than a lens that can introduce readers to characters of all stripes. Yet, objectively speaking, the hazards of being gay for Greenwell's characters make their plot at least as dramatic as (say) that of Knausgaard's socially awkward teenager trying to sneak alcohol into a party in Book 1 of "My Struggle," or Lerner's expatriate poet adrift on a haze of hash in "Leaving the Atocha Station" - or either of these writer-protagonists' vainglorious preoccupations with their literary reputations. In Greenwell's book, the stakes are higher. It's a shame, then, that "What Belongs to You" is burdened with such a vague and unmemorable title. And the emphasis on Bulgaria's history and culture could have been stronger, to help solidify its choice as backdrop. Likewise, even if the country's thematic role is clear, it might have been nice from a straightforward narrative perspective to understand more about how the protagonist ended up there. Of course, an amiable laxness with story structure is a hazard of the all-over style - at first, the pace lags - but in a short book like this, a little slowness is not fatal. None of these quibbles are. "What Belongs to You" is a rich, important debut, an instant classic to be savored by all lovers of serious fiction because of, not despite, its subject: a gay man's endeavor to fathom his own heart. Why would a gay man move to Bulgaria? Perhaps it reminds him of his old Kentucky home. AARON HAMBURGER is the author of a story collection, "The View From Stalin's Head," and a novel, "Faith for Beginners."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
This sexually frank, deeply felt, and admirably constructed first novel takes us into a general culture most American readers will have no familiarity with contemporary Bulgaria and, further, into a subset of that culture that will be completely foreign to such readers, the gay netherworld of the capital city, Sofia. The opening scene the novel is told in first person introduces us to the two participants and sets the tone that will reign throughout. The narrator, a gay American expat who teaches in a Sofia school, seeks sexual trade in the bathroom of the National Palace of Culture, where one day he encounters a hustler named Mitko. Immediately attracted to no, mesmerized by Mitko, the two men fall into an uneasy relationship. Mitko is out for what he can get from the rich American. The narrator longs for intimacy, an abiding urge that stems from the rejection he felt as a boy from his father. This provocative tale rests on the theme to which we can all respond of the human need for possession, both emotional and sexual.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
With detailed prose, Greenwell's debut relays the story of an unnamed American college professor, living and teaching in Bulgaria, who develops a sexual relationship with a nomadic male prostitute named Mitko. Initially meeting in public bathroom stalls at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, the pair shift their dates to the professor's apartment and eventually decide to travel to Varna, Mitko's hometown on the Black Sea, for a brief respite. However, Mitko's violent side leaves Greenwell's protagonist afraid for his own safety. The two part ways, and years pass before Mitko, ravaged by time and homelessness, reenters the professor's life. Now in a committed long-distance relationship, the instructor battles his erotic yearning and faces increasing discomfort around his former lover, suspecting the prostitute's acts of kindness and care are nothing more than a lure for financial support. The book breaks up the adult protagonist's story with a long middle section devoted to exploring the professor's difficult childhood, as well as his first love, and it is here that the man's struggles-sexual and emotional-come alive. Greenwell's novel is a brave and articulate psychological exploration of lust and desire, and though his rich language often carries the book (rather than the plot), the carnal pain on display is striking. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The life of an American expat living in Bulgaria intersects repeatedly with that of a young gay hustler in this gorgeous debut novel from Greenwell. The unnamed narratoran English teacher who lives in the city of Sofiahas an addiction, and that addiction's name is Mitko. After they meet for the first time in a public bathroom, Mitko flits in and out of the narrator's life with abandon, alternating among offers of sex, hints at love, threats, blackmail, hunger, illness, neediness, rage, and despair. Mitko is beautiful, self-assured, and an enigma, and the narrator finds it hard to resist him. His growth is in his responses, which range from acquiescence to refusal, and it is this engine that propels the reader forward through a series of tenuously connected chapters that advance in irregular chronological intervals. This is a novel with a short story sensibility; many of the chapters stand on their own, hanging together only in the loosest sense. This is a feature, not a bug: instead of aggressively pursuing a series of tightly woven plotlines, readers may have the sense that they're peering through the narrator's window randomly and of their own free will, observing his latest state each time. As for the narrator, he can only move forward if he interrogates his pastthe question is, will he be able to? The prose here is supple and responsive, and Sofia teems with beauty and decay. Mitko lights up scenes like a firecracker and haunts the ones where he's absenta large segment of the novel where he does not appear still vibrates with his energybut the protagonist too is a source of gentle, steady illumination as he grapples with his cravings, memories, fears, and grief. This is a project of rare discernment and beauty, and it is not to be missed. A luminous, searing exploration of desire, alienation, and the powerful tattoo of the past. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
