#amreading What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

"Love isn't just a matter of looking at someone, I think now, but also of looking with them, of facing what they face"

What Belongs to You is the debut novel from American author and poet Garth Greenwell. The novel tells the story, in three distinct parts, of a un-named American teacher living, working and falling in love in Bulgaria.

The first part of the novel, Mitko, really defines Greenwell as a storyteller and is in fact an extended version of a previously published novella. The story begins with the narrator entering a renowned cruising spot at Sofia's National Palace of Culture where he meets Mitko, a 23 year old sex worker, and in doing so single handedly resets the narrative on gay Bulgaria with a new dignity.

The relationship with Mitko is initially based purely on a transactional basis, Mitko is drawn to sex work as a means to a iPhone and Nike style end, but this soon develops into a symbiosis that exposes both characters to a truth they struggle to accept. Mitko exudes a feral and animalistic sexuality; an enigma that is confounded with that of Bulgaria and Europe itself for the young teacher from Kentucky.

The second part of the novel, A Grave, is a flash back to the narrators time as a teenager in Kentucky and includes a betrayal (of sorts) which instantly captures the confusion and excitement of growing up in a intolerant and narrow-minded world. This is an interesting coming of age section which sits between Mitko and the final part Pox which both take place in Bulgaria.

Greenwell's simple storytelling style is free of overly elaborate prose or clever narrative structures. This is straight forward, truthful, explicit and painfully intimate though at the same time more accessible than work by other writers such as Christos Tsiolkas. Having been published within months of Hanya Yanigahara's A Little Life, there is certainly a trend in contemporary gay fiction which is becoming less marginalised each year. What Belongs to You is a novel that is nothing but purely honest.

I read this novel on kindle in April 2016 mostly on the Jubilee line

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell, published by Picador, 209 pages

The July Shortlist

This month’s stack was as varied and unpredictable as the weather – where did the British summer go? With fewer review copies landing on the doorstep I resorted to digging deep into my must-read pile with varying degrees of success. Elena Ferrante’s My Beautiful friend was a bit of slog, Ann Cleaves’ The Long Call presented a potentially interesting new protagonist in DI Matthew Venn and then there was Kerouac’s The Big Sur which reminded why I love beat writers and what a real summer looks like, California style.

‘And we come out on the highway and go right battin up to Monterey in the Big Sur dusk where down there on the faint gloamy frothing rocks you can hear the seals cry’

So what tops the July shortlist? Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness. Here are some of my thoughts with no spoilers…

If you were left wanting more after What Belongs to you then this hardback release is for you. Greenwell’s new collection of short stories expands the world he created first time round with more layers of vividly poetic texture.

The stories cleverly inhabit the same world, and broadly the same characters, but the short story format allows for so much more to be packed in. In expert prose Greenwell simultaneously digs deeper and more widely to weave a richer and more complex tapestry.

Obsessive inclusion of Bulgarian phrases aside, Cleanness delivers an impressive follow up that cements Garth Greenwell’s talent as a storyteller unafraid of the truth.

‘The sound of the crowd grew louder, that inchoate sound, formless and primal, inhuman, hardly animal now but primordial, chthonic, like a sound the earth would make’

This month's shortlist of the best reads for your bookshelf:

The Vegetarian by Han Kang
This year's Man Booker International Prize winner is a truly memorable novel by South Korean writer Han Kang whose work has been translated into English, for the first time, by Deborah Smith.

Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris

This is the debut novel from playwrite Barney Norris who saw success with his 2014 play Visitors. The novel is set in Norris's home town of Salisbury in Wiltshire and features the lives of five ordinary people brought together by one extraordinary event. 

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

This is the debut novel from American author and poet Garth Greenwell. The novel tells the story, in three distinct parts, of a un-named American teacher living, working and falling in love in Bulgaria

The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink

"I was looking at the map when Stephen swerved, hit the rock, and occasioned the miscarriage. So begins The Wallcreeper, a curious little novel about love, loss and birdwatching.

Some Rain Must Fall by Karl Ove Knausgaard

A literary memoir written by a great fiction writer for readers of fiction, an autobiographical epic through the lens of a writer desperate to write a literary classic. 

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

"A big story perhaps too big a story"

In The Heart's Invisible Furies John Boyne writes an epic multi-generational tale about relationships, about fate and about the indirect paths our lives lead. With themes including religion, family, class and sexuality this is hard hitting and emotionally complex stuff that Boyne weaves together effortlessly.  

The novel begins and ends with Catherine Goggin who we initially meet as a pregnant 16 year old girl fleeing rural West Cork for Dublin having been told, by brutal and hypocritical priest Father James Monroe, that her chances of marriage are doomed forever. Though we follow Catherine through the rest of the book the story belongs to her son Cyril whom she gives up for adoption by a middle class couple in Dublin.

Over the next 50 years or so Boyne explores life through Cyril's eyes as a gay man in a country that evolves from ancient theocracy to the modern day referendum on gay marriage.

Dealing with sexuality and class is well trodden ground in literature which Boyne plays out in the comparison between parochial Dublin and metropolitan Amsterdam and New York but there are better versions of this paradox in books like The Buddha of Suburbia (1993). What Boyne brings to the table is a specific Irish context which is best articulated when Cyril unexpectedly moves back to Dublin from New York.

Despite the huge landscapes covered in the novel Boyne's prose is wonderfully tender and poignant in places; 'All I asked for was a sign, something to give me the courage to walk away, and you couldn't even do that!'.

Perhaps the trouble with the novel is that there is too much content. The chapters in Amsterdam could make a stand-alone novel of their own and seem over done if only to introduce the characters of Baastian and surrogate son Ignac. 

This is a big story, perhaps too big a story, that could easily have been two. 3

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne published by Doubleday 592 pages