What Belongs to You

Garth Greenwell’s elegant, vivid and evocative writing makes this a stand-out novel. The novel engages the reader in strong emotions, sometimes of passion and longing, and other times of despair, hopelessness, aversion and regret.

The novel is written in first person, and the name of its narrator is never revealed, an accomplishment seldom achieved in first-person narratives.
The story is set in Bulgaria,a pathetic yet sometimes beautiful country which has been dominated and ruled by foriegn nations throughout most of its existence. This setting itself serves as a sort of character in the novel. The various locales and surroundings of each of the novel’s episodes impact what occurs in the setting as well as the moods and behaviors of show more the characters. In fact, Bulgaria itself is a country that has not yet achieved its own sovereignty, its own national identity, just as the two primary characters in this book cannot fully achieve their fullness, their independence from one another.

The narrator of the book finds a young man, Mitko in a rest room frequented by men looking to hook up with other men. It is the reason the narrator was in the rest room and Mitko is the one to sell his services to the older man.

The business relationship between the two men quickly grows into something bigger, yet is doomed to never be the deep and meaningful relationship the narrator longs for, even though he himself does not recognize that longing.

It is a powerful book, an emotional journey into desire, obsession and yearning, where neither man can admit his own desire for commitment to and feelings for the other man.

To say that the book ends on a tragic way is not to spoil or reveal its ending because the book is a tragic story all along. The two meet in tragic desperation, one for money, the other for companionship. The affair and relationship is misbegotten from the outset and can never grows beyond each man’s inability to be other than who they are.

This is not a standard romance, nor a tragic love story. It is a deep psychological exploration of two very different characters and their impacts on each other’s lives.

Most books about male relationships with other men are, surprisingly, both written by and read by women. As such, the stories they portray can only be what the female authors imagine a homosexual relationship to be. When an author is both male and gay himself, he is able to portray a mood, feeling tone and level of authenticity not possible from authors lacking those qualifications.

Greenwell is qualified to tell a story like this, not just because he a a gay male writer himself, but also because he is an extremely talented writer with the skill and experience only an experienced poet is able to display. show less

This short, three-part book tells the story of an unnamed American teacher who lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. The narrator's intricate and transactional relationship with Mitko, a young male hustler, is the main topic of the first and third sections. Their interactions are motivated by a complex power dynamic, loneliness, and desire.

The narrator considers his traumatic upbringing in the American South, his tense relationship with his father, and the causes of his internalized shame and trauma in the middle section, which is a lengthy, continuous paragraph that serves as a potent confessional interlude. The narrator's current fears and obsessions are crucially contextualized in this section. The book has a focused, intense feel because of its show more brief length and divided structure.

The consciousness on exhibit pierces your heart; it is a novel of eroticism and desire. Seldom have I come across such a powerful, lean story. show less

The structure of this novel, and the second part of the plot seem to suggest that the author struggled to rework existing material into a new novel. I would be very interested to read Greenwell's earlier novella Mitko assuming that that novella contains the basic story that form the basis for What belongs to you, however, Mitko is out of print.

What belongs to you is an interesting novel in which an expat, foreign teacher, develops a kind of relationship with a rent boy. The mid-section and the second part of the novel seem not quite succesfull to prepare for the theme of longing and belonging. However, even in its raw form the novel is moving and convincing.

The unnamed narrator of Garth Greenwell’s remarkable first novel is an American living in Sofia, Bulgaria, who in the first section meets a street hustler named Mitko in the public washroom of the National Palace of Culture. The narrator—still relatively young—is gay and makes no secret of it. In fact, full disclosure is his credo, and we later learn that people at the university where he teaches are aware of his orientation and not concerned. The encounter in the washroom marks the beginning of a relationship that, in brief sporadic bursts, extends over several years. At first, the narrator is obsessed with Mitko, charmed as much by his youthful vigor and risky lifestyle as by his supple body and sexual proficiency. The narrator show more is also someone who learned who he was early in life, learned to accept his identity and all of its implications even if his family did not. Much of the novel is given over to flashbacks or recollections, triggered when the narrator learns that back home in America his father is dying and wants to see him. The wound that this event opens is deep and, as we see, only in the early stages of healing. The narrator’s fascination with Mitko persists even after he learns that he’s been infected with syphilis, persists even after he consciously rejects the clichéd promiscuity that Mitko represents and settles into a monogamous relationship. He knows he has to cut him off, but what he cannot bear is Mitko’s loneliness, which is manifest in their every encounter and which again and again he takes it upon himself to assuage, even with Mitko treating his wallet like a personal bank account and occasionally even threatening physical harm. These aspects of Mitko simply feed the fascination. Greenwell’s novel is psychologically penetrating, uninhibited and dramatically intense. Densely written, every page crammed with evocative detail, the reflections on modern life offered up by its observant and acutely self-aware narrator are affecting, disturbing and thought-provoking. A supremely intelligent and lucid work of fiction that is also emotionally truthful, What Belongs to You will reward the adventurous reader looking for a new and genuinely original voice. show less

This novel is claustrophobic, making the reader feel as trapped as the main character (MC; an unnamed gay American teaching in Sofia, Bulgaria) so often does. Outside it is cold and inhospitable, inside it is hot and stuffy. The author's ability to portray that feeling--of feeling trapped and lightheaded, overheated and miserable; or of cold and scared and worried--is impressive.

The MC in this novel realizes that in coming to Sofia, he has come to a place where being a gay man is not unlike what it was like for him growing up in the American South. Why has he chosen to come to such a place when he had finally escaped? Again he feels he must hide his identity--and the claustrophobia that comes with it. Greenwell uses heat--in his show more apartment, on a train--and enclosed spaces--an underground bathroom used for cruising, a stairwell, train compartment, a doctor's office--to double up on the claustrophobia. Only when the MC is outside, in the open, in the fresh air, does he think about his childhood and relationship with his father, and explore his thoughts and feelings about his father. show less

This wasn't an easy book for me to read: the setting in a just-past golden age of American expat life, the unsympathetic narrator, the prose with its abundance of commas and dearth of paragraph breaks, the interiority and corresponding lack of exterior description to the point that I had trouble picturing the object of desire who drives the entire plot*. But now that I've finished, I doubt I'll be leaving this behind easily. What got me is the keen insight that underlies every interaction, especially the digression on the train where the narrator meets a child who could grow up to be the much-wanted Mitko. All those fine observations build to an understanding of real feeling, which doesn't happen every day.

*For some reason through most show more of the book I pictured Mitko as Ewan McGregor in Transpotting, which really didn't work. Toward the end I decided that the guy on the cover was Mitko, not the narrator, then I had to re-envision everything. show less

This novel was paired with [b:Black Deutschland: A Novel|25664520|Black Deutschland A Novel|Darryl Pinckney|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1452098769s/25664520.jpg|45487300] in a New Yorker review, here:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/unsuitable-boys

Fair enough since both are about gay expatriate men looking for love in Europe, and both published by FSG...but where Black Deutschland opened me to a new world and new thoughts, What Belongs to You closed me, and left me feeling cramped and confined by its level of introspection, by its air of regret and loss. It's a truly claustrophobic story, from the first cramped scene set in a men's public restroom. It mixes the promise of love with mythology/reality about disease and power show more imbalance and violence. It's tremendously well-written; it's fiction that is truthful in the best sense; but it was just too airless for me. show less