Cleanness

Product Description
Longlisted for the Prix Sade 2021Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates PrizeLonglisted for the Gordon Burn PrizeA New York Times Notable Book of 2020A New York Times Critics Top Ten Book of the YearNamed a Best Book of the Year by over 30 Publications, including The New Yorker, TIME, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, and the BBCIn the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desireSofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song.In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves.Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell’s beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared “an instant classic” by The New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, he transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers.
Review
“Incandescent ... [Greenwell's] writing about sex is altogether scorching. You pick his novels up with asbestos mitts, and set them down upon trivets to protect your table from heat damage ...Greenwell has an uncanny gift, one that comes along rarely.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review“Extraordinary ... The overall effect is even more impressive than [What Belongs to You] ... The range in these stories is part of their triumph and part of what makes their existential sorrow so profound ... Incomparably bittersweet ... Brilliant.”―Ron Charles, The Washington Post"The casual grandeur of Garth Greenwell’s prose, unfurling in page-long paragraphs and elegantly garrulous sentences, tempts the vulnerable reader into danger zones . . . These stories are masterpieces of radical eroticism, but they wouldn’t have the same impact if they didn’t appear in a gorgeously varied narrative fabric, amid scenes of more wholesome love, finely sketched vistas of political unrest, haunting evocations of a damaged childhood, and moments of mundane rapture. Tenderness, violence, animosity, and compassion are the outer edges of what feels like a total map of the human condition." ―Alex Ross, The New Yorker (Best Books of 2020) "Greenwell is a relentless truth-teller with a poet’s eye for detail and a shimmering prose style that’s reason enough to read the book."―Jim Zarroli, NPR Books (Best Books of 2020)"Greenwell is among our finest writers on sex and desire."―Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire (Best Books of 2020 So Far)"An aching examination of intimacy and power."―Annabel Gutterman, TIME (Best Books of 2020 So Far)“Exquisite ... Greenwell displays a precocious ability to take readers into his narrator's mind and body ... Greenwell submerges readers in the bedroom, sharing his protagonist's intense attractions and doubts ... Greenwell's prose sings, even as much of the music occurs in the rests. This writer understands beauty and loss, sorrow and hope, his fluid writing making the telling seem effortless.” ―Martha Ann Toll, NPR Books“[Cleanness] is, quite simply, a work of genius that will change the way you understand the world and your place in it.” ―Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post“Gorgeous.” ―Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly“In much the way that other male American write