'A rich, important debut, an instant classic to be savored by all lovers of serious fiction' New York Times
Garth Greenwell is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was an Arts Fellow. His novella Mitko won the 2010 Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award.
What Belongs to You stands naturally alongside the great works of
compromised sexual obsession such as Thomas Mann's Death in Venice
. . . we are dealing with a writer who deserves his plaudits . . .
I found myself unable to stop reading . . . Headily accomplished .
. . an essential work of our time
*Daily Telegraph ******
Worthy of its comparisons to James Baldwin and Alan Hollinghurst as
well as Virginia Woolf and W G Sebald . . . spellbinding . . . a
novel of rejection and disgust, displacement and transcendence . .
. I found myself trembling as I read it
*Evening Standard*
A refreshingly slim, subdued and contemplative piece of work . . .
Greenwell writes in long, consummately nuanced sentences, strung
with insights and soaked in melancholy . . . What Belongs to You is
an uncommonly sensitive, intelligent and poignant novel
*Sunday Times*
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. 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 . . . [The] middle section [is]
a masterful study in alienation and escape . . . Like the writers
he admires, WG Sebald, Thomas Bernhard and Javier Marías, he is
drawn to the idea of a body of work that seems as though it is all
one book, or, as with Sebald in particular, a territory in which
the reader wanders. It is perhaps too soon to say precisely what
Greenwell's own fictional territory will look like - but even this
early on, the landscape looks too riveting to miss
*Guardian*
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
*New York Times Book Review*
Brilliantly self-aware . . . Greenwell's novel impresses for many
reasons, not least of which is how perfectly it fulfills its
intentions. But it gains a different power from its uneasy
atmosphere of psychic instability, of confession and penitence, of
difficult forces acknowledged but barely mastered and beyond the
conscious control of even this gifted novelist
*New Yorker*
With What Belongs to You American literature is richer by one
masterpiece. The character Mitko is unforgettable, as all myths
are. He reigns at the heart of this book, surrounded by the magic
flames of desire
*Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story*
A powerful novel from a writer who seems destined to produce fine
work in the years ahead, describing both the condition of
loneliness and the insistent cravings of the flesh with precision
and sensitivity. [Greenwell] never seeks to manipulate our
emotions, but creates a narrative voice so enigmatic that one feels
both affection and disdain for him simultaneously. Too often in
fiction it becomes clear how an author wants the reader to feel,
but Greenwell's character is too complex a creation for any easy
judgments. And that is what will make both him and this novel
particularly memorable
*Irish Times*
In his spare, haunting novel, Garth Greenwell takes a well-known
narrative and finds new meaning in it. What Belongs to You is a
searching and compassionate meditation on the slipperiness of
desire, the impossibility of salvation, and the forces of shame,
guilt, and yearning that often accompany love, rendered in language
as beautiful and vivid as poetry
*Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life*
There's a particular joy in reading Garth Greenwell, in having that
feeling, precious and rare: here is the real thing
*Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs*
In Garth Greenwell's incandescent first novel, What Belongs to You,
an old tale is made new, and made punishing. . . Mr. Greenwell
writes long sentences, pinned at the joints by semicolons, that
push forward like confidently searching vines. There's suppleness
and mastery in his voice. He seems to have an inborn ability to
cast a spell . . . A writer who opens chasms rather than builds
substandard bridges . . . A subtle observer of human interactions.
He underscores the way expressions of love are nearly always, in
part, performance
*New York Times*
Exquisite . . . Stylistically, Greenwell owes more to Sebald than
to Nabokov . . . One of the great pleasures of his prose is how
profoundly thoughtful it is, even when considering physical needs
and passions. This is emotion recollected in tranquillity, or
rather in melancholy. There is an almost visceral disjuncture
between places and actions that are grubby, even squalid, and the
delicacy of the lens through which they're seen. Yet the effect,
paradoxically, is one of almost pure emotion
*The Nation*
One of the few novels I've read which feels like it offers an
authentic account of what growing up is like for gay people in
western societies . . . Greenwell's novel is at its most affecting
when subtly pushing readers to examine their own attitudes and
motives . . . By illuminating the dividing lines in our unequal
world, Greenwell's novel challenges us to think about privilege,
especially our own . . . What Belongs To You presents a challenging
and refreshing vision of gay life. It's an original addition to the
line of fiction which, from Henry James to Ben Lerner, chronicles
the lives of Americans in Europe. Greenwell painstakingly captures
desire in all its complex, double-edged intensity . . . Erotic
holding, emotional withholding and the question of who holds power
in a relationship are all examined in a work which gripped me all
the way to its sad and beautiful ending
*Independent on Sunday*
Garth Greenwell's first novel is gilded with the kind of praise
that debut writers might never dare to imagine for themselves . . .
none of it is hyperbole. The praise is earned . . . first,
Greenwell's abundant gifts: the language, Hanya Yanagihara says on
the book sticker, is "as beautiful and vivid as poetry". To speak
in such an approximation, though, might sell it short. Little here
is metaphoric though no word is spare. Every utterance seems imbued
with thought that is deep and beautiful in its clarity
*Independent*
He imbues his prose with a bewitching combination of ethereal
somnolence, luminosity and brutal rumination. His sentences are
carefully balanced . . . This command of form can also be felt in
the larger structures of the novel: in the rhythm and tone of its
paragraphs, and in the cumulative music of the book as a whole
*Times Literary Supplement*
[A novel] about the lasting damage that a loveless childhood can
inflict . . . The last sequence includes some marvellous vignettes
of loving kindness between parents and children, but they are
presented as something that only other people can ever have, and
the final pages of the book are memorable for their bleak and
desperate sadness
*Guardian*
Heartfelt . . . [A] touching, desperately sad story. And the
character of Mitko, so vivid yet elusive, explains why What Belongs
to You is such a promising debut
*The Times*
Contains both psychological depth and moments of breathtaking
drama
*Observer*
This astonishing debut novel's portrait of compromised lust holds
its own against classics like Lolita
*Sunday Telegraph*
A slender and achingly beautifully novel full of the gloriously
messy pain of unrequited and inappropriate love
*Stylist*
A truly stunning debut . . . a masterpiece . . . A literary star is
born
*BBC Radio Scotland*
The American book changing gay literature
*Attitude*
A slim novel, yes, but a slim masterpiece
*Monocle24*
I was blown away by [What Belongs to You]
*the Reader’s Digest podcast*
Exquisite . . . Risk and desire are the 'coterminous' elements of
the book's style as well as its action, terms of engagement
Greenwell makes plain from its first page . . . Breathtaking . . .
It's hard to tell at times whether the narrator is the innocent
abroad or an American abroad among innocents. Greenwell's insight
is that the destruction of innocence is a process that never
halts
*New York Magazine*
Outstanding in just about every way a novel could be
*Los Angeles Times*
The strength of this slim book is the vibrant, heartbreaking
character Mr Greenwell creates in Mitko: object of the unnamed
narrator's desire, fear, obsession and, ultimately, pity. . . Mr
Greenwell offers a tender portrait of the longing for connection
and acceptance that inhabits us all
*The Economist*
Although this is a debut novel, expectations have been running
high. What Belongs to You grew from a lauded novella called Mitko.
And Greenwell's literary criticism in the New Yorker and the
Atlantic demonstrates an unusually keen and insightful mind. That
promise is fully realized here in the dark magic of these pages . .
. This is a novel of aggressive introspection, but Greenwell writes
with such candor and psychological precision that the effect is
oddly propulsive . . . In the end, a novel like this can't offer
any resolution except its perfect articulation of despair that
anyone with a heart will hear
*The Washington Post*
Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You is the Great Gay Novel for
our times . . . an astonishing debut
*New Republic*
Garth Greenwell starts 2016 on a high note with What Belongs to
You, a novel that can be called truly great. The narrative follows
an American teacher in Bulgaria and his relationship with a young
hustler named Mitko, whom he pays for sex. But the interaction
doesn't end there as you might expect, and neither does the
exploration of desire, which Greenwell orchestrates brilliantly.
Plumbing the depths of sexuality and psychology, What Belongs to
You is lingering and haunting
*ELLE.com*
What Belongs To You comes to feel, in the end, like a great
enactment of an infatuation, exciting and appalling by turns-a
brilliantly observed account of an attempt to make another person
entirely yours, to subsume them within your story
*Guernica*
At just about two hundred pages, What Belongs to You feels at once
expansive and instantaneous, and its lyrical use of time is one of
its most striking and immersive elements. In any given section,
every moment of the book is present. . . the novel recalls works
like Rachel Cusk's Outline, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, and
Teju Cole's Open City; and, of course, it descends stylistically
from Sebald . . . What Belongs to You is a haunting, gorgeous, and
fierce debut, capturing desire in every sentence - holding the
space of what we long for and what can never truly be ours
*The Rumpus*
Garth Greenwell's debut novel What Belongs to You aches with desire
and tenderness: an American professor in Bulgaria encounters a male
prostitute named Mitko in a public bathroom, beginning a complex
sexual relationship between the two that will have enormous
ramifications for them both. Lyrical and haunting, What Belongs to
You is a rumination on lust, shame, violence, and the ways in which
sexual and emotional pain stays with and shapes us
*Buzzfeed*
Thomas Mann, Henry James and Marcel Proust are Greenwell's
strongest forebears, with James Baldwin and Alan Hollinghurst as
equally discernible inspirations. . .Garth Greenwell's writing is
alive to the foreign and the unknown; he opens our eyes to worlds
we had not realized existed alongside our own. Even the landscape
of Bulgaria, one of the poorest and least-known countries in
Europe, is made vivid and vibrant. . .What Belongs to You make
visible all the painful and beautiful facets of human life and
human love
*New Republic*
Reaches, with elegance, with poetry, into what it means to be a
human. . .I rarely feel such a connection with a book: I am sure
many others will too, after reading this
*Bookseller*
[What Belongs to You is] the first great novel of 2016 . . . The
book is brilliantly structured . . . [and] Greenwell's ability to
parse the complex emotional push-and-pull between the two men is
incredible, and rivals books like Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life
or Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. His images are spot-on . . . And
in Mitko, Greenwell has created one of the best characters in
recent years. What Belongs to You is a great tragedy, and Greenwell
is a great writer. I'll be reading whatever he writes next."
*Publishers Weekly (Staff Pick)*
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
*Kirkus*
There's a gorgeousness to Greenwell's prose . . . This is a
heart-breaking, important piece of work, which emphasises to us all
how much our lives are made (and unmade) by how our bodies collide
(or don't) with the bodies of others
*Next Review*
Slim, eloquent and emotionally wrenching, this debut novel is a
superb evocation of that curious state known as love . . .
Greenwell's shimmering novel recounts an age-old story with such
toughness and tenderness as to make it seem new: and that is an art
in itself
*RTÉ Guide*
What Belongs To You is a very accomplished novel from an
exceptionally skilled writer. It brilliantly deconstructs the expat
experience, modern sexual mores, and cross-continental cultural
divides, echoing one of Greenwell's go-to novels growing up, James
Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. Undoubtedly one of the novels of the
year, Greenwell is a writer to watch
*GCN*
Utterly absorbing . . . powerful . . . For its mastery of tone and
its expert drawing together of a number of disparate elements,
Greenwell's narrative feat is utterly remarkable and the final ten
pages amount to one of the most moving passages this reviewer has
ever read in contemporary fiction
*RTÉ*
Great portrayal of obsession . . . it is in his prose that
Greenwell displays his mastery
*New Statesman*
Masterly début . . . a melancholy but unwavering account of desire
and its aetiologies . . . Mitko is one of the the most
unforgettable characters in contemporary gay literature . . .
Greenwell's rare invocation of desire's inexorable spell propels
you right to the end
*Australian Book Review*
First-rate debut . . . Greenwell's entranced sentences, Sebald-like
in their gravity and evocativeness, take us back to the old
days
*Sydney Morning Herald*
What Belongs to You is a rich and sensually detailed exploration of
love and obsession. A haunting, beautiful novel
*Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman*
What Belongs to You is a beautiful, moving, sensual novel. It
announces Garth Greenwell as one of America's most exciting young
writers
*Jonathan Lee, author of High Dive*
In prose that is at once refined and lavish - the quiet dignity and
control of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day coupled with the
agonized passion and sexual tension of André Aciman's Call Me by
Your Name - Garth Greenwell takes us deep inside a specific
Bulgarian subculture to examine the universal: the disparity
between the uninhibited lives we desire and the bearable lives we
choose. I began reading What Belongs to You in admiration; I ended
in tears. An exquisite debut
*Jamie Quatro, author of I Want to Show You More*
Garth Greenwell is a unique, and uniquely welcome, voice in
American letters. The consciousness on display in his debut novel
is so rich and restless that it seems practically inexhaustible: a
consciousness that rises to heights of both passion and intellect -
of passion harnessed by intellect. What Belongs to You very much
seems to me not only a great novel but the first installment in a
great body of work
*Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Illumination*
I am in awe of this book. So intimate, so honest, so exquisitely
crafted, it broke my heart and left me in tears. It showed me a
Bulgaria both familiar and entirely novel, rendered with candor and
deep affection, and characters, whose plight and desires at first
seemed foreign yet, before long, so dear. Garth Greenwell has
written a marvelous book, an important book - one whose impact is
as much artistic as it is cultural. What Belongs to You expands not
simply the world of letters, but also our collective knowledge of
what it means to be human
*Miroslav Penkov, author of East of the West*
What Belongs To You is a short novel, but Garth Greenwell's
sentences are expansive and revelatory and poetic. Greenwell
juxtaposes the narrator's experiences in an unprogressive, formerly
Communist country still recovering its infrastructure, to the
narrator's own childhood, growing up gay and closeted in the
oppressive American South . . . a lovely meditation on fear and
acceptance, desire and oppression, and the disparity between two
cultures
*Esquire*
Beautifully rendered, quietly obsessive. A Sebaldian account of a
gay American in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the bruising experience of his
sexuality being revealed to his father when he was younger
*Adam Haslett, author of Imagine Me Gone*
I was blown away by it . . . beautiful
*Saturday Review, BBC Radio 4*
Absolutely astonishing . . . a tour de force . . . remarkable
*Saturday Review, BBC Radio 4*
Beautifully written . . . a galvanising read as Greenwell
constantly dissects his own feelings, thoughts and motives, sieving
through desire and need with intelligence, insight and candour . .
. Greenwell pulls off a mesmeric read . . . a finely wrought and
compelling artifact of both beauty and truth.
*New Zealand Listener*
I devoured it, in a single sitting . . . I was completely
spellbound by it . . . What Belongs To You is concentrated
brilliance, a short novel that packs an emotive and thought
provoking punch. I urge you all to read it
*Savidge Reads*
The literary sensation . . . a brilliant tale of gay desire and
class division that is exquisitely phrased
*i*
What Belongs To You is an exquisite triptych
*Vulture*
An astonishing portrait of compromised lust, set in ex-Soviet
Sofia, this debut novel holds its own against classics such as
Lolita
*Telegraph*
I sat down to read a chapter of What Belongs to You one afternoon
and ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting, hunched over
my kitchen table until dark. Garth Greenwell's devastatingly
beautiful novel about a gay American expat in Bulgaria and his
on-again, off-again relationship with a sex worker named Mitko has
been one of the year's breakout hits, and for good reason. It's a
virtuosic, tender exploration of loneliness and desire, with
sentences so breathtaking you'll find yourself returning to them
over and over again
*NPR*
I read this book when it first emerged and I will keep reading it
every year of my life. It is a secular desire bible. It is desire
alive.
*The Millions*
The book I wish I’d written? Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You.
It does in its few perfect pages everything – absolutely everything
– that I aspire to do with words.
*Guardian*
Garth Greenwell’s book has the power and infinite beauty of an
ancient tragedy: on every page, passion, obsession, and the
struggle for freedom collide with the inevitability of fate and the
violence of society. At the same time, it’s a radically
contemporary novel, which overwhelmed me as much with its language
– rhythmic, incantatory, visceral – as with the way it takes the
subjects of memory, escape, desire, and melancholy, and makes them
new. What Belongs to You is an essential book.
*Édouard Louis*
A spare, spellbinding account . . . written in gorgeously limpid
prose . . . fearless and nerve-racking autobiographical fiction,
incandescent with yearning, rage and rejection . . . one of the
most heartbreaking accounts of pained desire that I can remember
reading . . . worthy of its comparisons to James Baldwin and Alan
Hollinghurst as well as Virginia Woolf and WG Sebald
*Johanna Thomas-Corr, Observer*
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