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What Belongs to You
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What Belongs to You
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What Belongs to You
Audiobook6 hours

What Belongs to You

Written by Garth Greenwell

Narrated by Piter Marek

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he's forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko's own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want. What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 19, 2016
ISBN9781501907944
Unavailable
What Belongs to You
Author

Garth Greenwell

Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into more than a dozen languages. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, was published in 2020. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review, among others. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in Iowa City. 

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Rating: 3.836257297076024 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A heartbreaking story about an American teacher in Bulgaria who fell in love with a man of proclivities who could not return his love.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Devastating and sentimental look into the life of American Expatriot teacher who begins a relationship with a Bulgarian hustler in Sophia. It’s well written and the artist who reads the book is quite good. Looking forward to look reading other books by the author.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Meh. Didn't live up to the hype at all for me, not even close.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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 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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A young gay American has a "sentimental education" while teaching English in Bulgaria - and receives his predictable epiphanies just as you expect he will.WBTY is well-written in the "Iowa Writers' Workshop" manner, but the novel was of limited appeal to me because of the 1st person narrator, who (to me) comes across as vain, condescending, and narcissistic - somewhat the typical young American abroad. And I don't understand why the middle section is written in one long unbroken paragraph that goes on for forty pages. IMHO, just because Faulkner did it, doesn't mean it needs to be done again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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 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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Captures the angst of living as an expat in a familiar yet foreign landscape...[in progress]
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Breathtakingly beautiful prose and an incredible sense of place.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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 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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not my cuppa. It's a well-written book, I was just not the right reader.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An expat American teaching in Bulgaria is drawn inexplicably to a fellow, Mitko, in a rest room who sells what the expat is hoping to acquire. It's quite obvious from the start that Mitko desires nice things and will do what he needs to in order to get them. A homosexual relationship begins between the two in explicit language. Over the course of time the expat gets more than he bargained for from Mitko and each time he gives him money and sends him on his way, Mitko returns. Frankly, I have never read a book like this before. It was enlightening and I grew sympathetic to the American's and Mitko's alienation.Looking back, the expat recalls his childhood, his confused initial feelings of sexuality and the reactions from his parents, especially his father, who did not offer the support and understanding the young man required. Perhaps, the author in writing this book, wants to shed light on an unfamiliar topic and if so, I think he's succeeded.Edit | More
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This carefully crafted small novel arises from the chance encounter of an expat American with a charming hustler in a public restroom in Bulgaria. It examines the ridiculousness of any desire and the mortification of unrequited desire in particular, and the narrator's limited Bulgarian language skills is a perfect metaphor for the miscommunications between the desiring and the desired. For me, the smallness of the scope felt a bit cramped at times; except as it related to his desire for the hustler, the narrator's goals and motivations were not always clear. Yet there was something also delicate, even exquisite about Greenwell's observations and in particular his capturing the twin sides of shame and excitement that characterize the narrator's want, especially where what he wants is objectively not as good or proper as what he already has.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hauntingly beautiful prose. On the surface this novel appears very different from Crow Lake and My Name is Lucy Barton, the most recent novels I've read. However, it's ultimately about understanding your own heart, your own story. It's also another novel of the family secrets that permeate the life of the main character. For me, the most affecting section of the novel was "The Grave", which gives a glimpse into the life of the main character's father as well as his own coming of age. Extremely moving.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rating: 4* of fiveThe Publisher Says: On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want.What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.My Review: The sentences are lovely, the affect on me was about that of graphene aerogel. I am too old, I think, to find novelty in what seems to me a perfectly ordinary young gay man's exploration of being gay. He met his lust object in the bathroom! *gasp* He PAID him!! *clutching of pearls*So what? Anybody out there read OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS, QUERELLE, CORYDON? How about DANCER FROM THE DANCE, NOCTURNES FOR THE KING OF NAPLES? I read them all (and a boatload of Gordon Merrick's salacious sudsers) early enough in life to be gobsmacked by these themes.But this book is marketed to grown-ups, not teens, and stylistically it's a pretty arabesque, but so wispy and pale as to vanish up its own tailpipe (so to speak); I think it's a disservice to 17-year-olds not to let them read the ungraphic sex scenes and a disservice to experienced readers to call this pretty puff of smoke stunning, intense, or erotic (the publisher's copy says all three).Four stars, all for handsomely carved phrases and beautiful descriptive scene-setting. But if you're over 35, maybe this should be a library borrow.