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A review by gadicohen93
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
3.0
The original novella -- the first half of the book -- was deeply moving, an inevitably-broken travelogue pseudoromance that untangled the fine line of falling for someone you're paying to sleep with. The writing was subdued, evocative, hyperaware of the ways in which the smallest of human gestures and interactions can reveal deep insecurities. The main character evoked Ben Lerner's character in Leaving the Atocha Station in how separated he felt from the new European world around him and in how his inner thoughts juxtaposed with his outer interactions; he also was falling in a love that approximated Call Me By Your Name in how surprising, foreign, and unavoidably failed it was.
Then -- a long and awful stream-of-consciousness digression in the middle about the character's Midwestern upbringing, his father's rejection of him, his sisters' damaged psyches, etc. Yawn. Why do writers feel like en media res backstory is always good? It usually reads as gratuitous filler, a diversion from the pull of the concrete present to an abstract, peripheral, unwanted past.
The last third -- Mitko's fall from grace, nod to one Balkan neighbor -- was also prolonged (I am not especially interested in reading accounts of STD testing horror stories in post-Soviet states), but at least returned to the same observant and delicate voice of the first third. It was quite sad, but also echoed the hollowness of the romance.
I can't wait for the author to write about a real love someday, without all the childhood digressions.
Then -- a long and awful stream-of-consciousness digression in the middle about the character's Midwestern upbringing, his father's rejection of him, his sisters' damaged psyches, etc. Yawn. Why do writers feel like en media res backstory is always good? It usually reads as gratuitous filler, a diversion from the pull of the concrete present to an abstract, peripheral, unwanted past.
The last third -- Mitko's fall from grace, nod to one Balkan neighbor -- was also prolonged (I am not especially interested in reading accounts of STD testing horror stories in post-Soviet states), but at least returned to the same observant and delicate voice of the first third. It was quite sad, but also echoed the hollowness of the romance.
I can't wait for the author to write about a real love someday, without all the childhood digressions.