middle section a masterful study in alienation and escape. In fact, though, the greater similarity lies in their ability to blend a lyrical prose - the prose of longing, missed connections, grasped pleasures - with an almost uncanny depth of observation. I had thought of Hollinghurst as I read What Belongs to You, Greenwell's astonishingly assured debut novel, but questioned whether the parallel came to mind because both writers create vivid, enclosed worlds filled with ambiguous and shifting relationships between gay men. What Belongs to You is an uncommonly sensitive, intelligent and poignant novel * Sunday Times * Greenwell writes in long, consummately nuanced sentences, strung with insights and soaked in melancholy. I found myself trembling as I read it * Evening Standard *Ī refreshingly slim, subdued and contemplative piece of work. a novel of rejection and disgust, displacement and transcendence. Worthy of its comparisons to James Baldwin and Alan Hollinghurst as well as Virginia Woolf and W G Sebald. an essential work of our time * Daily Telegraph ***** *
we are dealing with a writer who deserves his plaudits. What Belongs to You stands naturally alongside the great works of compromised sexual obsession such as Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. Longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction.Ī Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.Ī Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. Startlingly erotic and immensely powerful, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You tells an unforgettable story about the ways our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, their relationship growing increasingly intimate and unnerving.Īs he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he's forced to grapple with his own fraught history: his formative experiences of love, his painful rejection by family and friends, and the difficulty of growing up as a gay man in southern America in the 1990s.
There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace of Culture. Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize.
Winner of the Debut of the Year Award at the British Book Awards.
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