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A review by abarkmeier
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
3.0
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that tried harder to be lofty and intellectual (or British). Within the first few pages I wondered if the (American) author was aspiring to emulate Ishiguro or Camus, but came to the conclusion that he mostly wished to secure himself as a provocative and poetic elite. At times he accomplishes this, though with unnecessary and fairly obvious barriers for the reader.
I was unsurprised, upon finishing the book, to learn that part of it has previously been published as a novella, as the whole time I read it I thought, “this should be a novella.”
It’s clear that the writer is intelligent and there are moments of the alluring poetry the book is hellbent on achieving, and the story and writing finds its stride in the last third of the book—with the brief exception of a chapter in which we get to watch the narrator watch a kid be bored.
Perhaps the biggest limitation for this book in novel form is that I never latched on to caring about anything or anyone. The thread of the novel was unclear, with the exception of a tragic if very stock-seeming character, whose predictability outweighed the need for a whole novel about his mysterious presence.
I was unsurprised, upon finishing the book, to learn that part of it has previously been published as a novella, as the whole time I read it I thought, “this should be a novella.”
It’s clear that the writer is intelligent and there are moments of the alluring poetry the book is hellbent on achieving, and the story and writing finds its stride in the last third of the book—with the brief exception of a chapter in which we get to watch the narrator watch a kid be bored.
Perhaps the biggest limitation for this book in novel form is that I never latched on to caring about anything or anyone. The thread of the novel was unclear, with the exception of a tragic if very stock-seeming character, whose predictability outweighed the need for a whole novel about his mysterious presence.