What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell (2016)

 I could air the usual complaints about the overzealous critical hailing of this book, but am in danger of becoming boring about the current reviewing world's acritical lack of penetration. It is the story of a young American gay man teaching English in Bulgaria, and of a hookup which meant a lot in his life. He takes the opportunity to taste the variety on offer through casual trysts when he can, and in one popular spot at the National Palaces of Culture in Sofia meets a slender, handsome and seemingly streetwise young fellow called Mitko, who gets under his skin. They have a couple of subsequent encounters and develop a connection, with Mitko tapping him for cash and help on occasion. These he is happy to provide, balancing in his mind the cash-relationship and the far less usual one of growing interpersonal empathy, backed by his own feelings of loneliness and isolation resulting in part from a troubled and slightly loveless family history. His sense of blankness and sometime inadequacy for life's brighter story, which has always seemed a little out of reach, is broadly emotionally convincing. He goes through a relatively brief honeymoon period with Mitko under these mild shadows, and then they start to come apart. He finally puts an end to it, knowing it's going nowhere. But somehow Mitko keeps re-emerging into his life - arriving at the door of his block of flats, needing to come in, because he just wants to see him, needs some money, has nowhere to sleep that night, and so on. And our narrator gives in, still quite attracted physically, also registering Mitko's charm, and the delimited power of the special bond between them. In one of their breaks his father falls mortally ill in the States, and we follow him, loosed into the Sofia suburbs during the day after the news has been delivered, wandering through waste places in an anguished musing state, still holding the note which brought the news at his school, it slowly turning to sweaty mush in his hand. The memories and questions of a childhood which started out as bright as might be expected, and gradually dulled as his parents separated, he lost emotional contact with others, realised his homosexuality, withdrew into a diminished and nervous personal state, obsess him. After a couple of other rapprochements between he and Mitko, where he notices Mitko getting thinner, and more dishevelled, his constant drinking and dangerous lifestyle clearly taking a toll, we reach the most effective part of this by far. A precursive section of a visit by his emotionally grasping mother, which develops with maturing sweetness on a train journey into something more positive, is followed by a stilly sad last meeting between them. Mitko arrives, vulnerable and weeping, banging at the door again in terrible condition, with the news that the condition of the liver which has plagued him since his childhood in Varna has become terminal, not of course helped by his alcoholism. What follows is a really clear evocation of the pain of compassion, as the narrator realises, in a troubled few hours with him, what it looks like when someone who hasn't been given many chances, and has manipulated like hell in more blooming times to survive, finding response in others through personal charms both genuine and affected, becomes small in the face of the great blackness about to engulf them, and in the decrease brought on by the wear and tear of want. All of the above is really good material for fiction, and the last couple of sections are indeed very affecting in their unclouded reach for truths of emotion. But prior to these final stages, this work suffers. The problem is mainly in the 'voice' of the prose. It is a voice which feels incredibly well-trained. It reaches for profundity with really fine modulation. But it does so anonymously. There is such carefulness here that the reader feels they are witnessing a highly emulatory 'exercise in good writing'. But of course only part of what makes writing good is being addressed: the technical part. There is a potential reason for this - that it was an attempt on Greenwell's part to express the carefulness and blankness of his narrator. I'll wait to see if his next novel booms off the page with great personality, then, as he exemplifies a different sort of character, or allows his own much more arresting authorial voice to be heard? But my instinct tells me that's not the case. This guarded and dulled conscientiousness is his authorial voice for the moment. The word that keeps coming when considering the style here is dutiful. A feeling of meticulous care taken to reach one particular mark, but another vital care of his art ignored. This is a first novel, though - there could be a lot further to go, where that voice will be found. Given how skilled he is technically, the hope would be that that happens.