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A review by ndizz87
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
2.0
Where to start....I got this novel because it had come with recommendations. After reading it, I think 3 out of 5 is being quite generous. The plot centers around an American teacher, the narrator, in Bulgaria looking for love in all the wrong places. These wrong places are where he meets Mitko, a jovial, extremely poor male prostitute operating out of dingy bathrooms. Their first encounter entices the narrator to continue seeing the younger man, who by all accounts, is only gay-for-pay. Throughout the novel they travel around Bulgaria being completely disappointed by one another until the spectre of death comes along. Fade to black.
Let’s first talk about the narrator who is wholly unsympathetic. This is a symptom of the larger issue with the novel as every single character in the novel is entirely unsympathetic. Not just that, but they’re all 100% pathetic. I don’t really like the narrator and there is nothing about him that makes me at least half heartedly attempt to like him. I also, by the end of the novel, don’t really feel like I knew him well enough. He puts himself in these situations and then laments about the situations he finds himself in. Really? The whole “A Grave” section nearly made me put the books down as the narrator talks, at length, about his relationship with his father that he just finds out is dying. Don’t get me wrong, the passages about the relationship with a red-haired boy was interesting. How they became physically close and then the red-haired boy makes him watch as he gets a blow job from a girl to prove his heterosexuality...piqued my interest. That gets destroyed when he starts talking about sexually suggestive things regarding his father and their showers together. I just really didn’t need that visual at all.
Mitko was probably the best fleshed out character, and yet I still felt completely distant from him. I wanted to know more and I wanted to get inside his perspective as it was clearly probably the superior perspective. However, I didn’t get that at all. And the language barrier, though understandable, kept me from having the closeness to Mitko that I wanted, and quite frankly needed.
The plot left a lot to be desired for such a thin novel. The two characters meet in a bathroom. Later, the narrator lets him come over to his place. After that they go to a seaside town and have a fight. They go without seeing each other for a long time (enter creepy Daddy issues). They reconnect after the narrator has a boyfriend and Mitko discovers he’s given the narrator syphilis. The narrator goes to a seaside town on a train with his mom. Creepy thoughts about a little boy being Mitko. Mitko comes back to say he’s dying. The end.
I won’t put much effort into reviewing this insubstantial novel. It was enough to take Greenwell’s follow up off my “to read” list. The characters were distant and unknowable, the plot was thin (like the novel itself), and I didn’t gleam much from it. It was a waste, but the upside was it was so thin it didn’t take up too much of my time.
Let’s first talk about the narrator who is wholly unsympathetic. This is a symptom of the larger issue with the novel as every single character in the novel is entirely unsympathetic. Not just that, but they’re all 100% pathetic. I don’t really like the narrator and there is nothing about him that makes me at least half heartedly attempt to like him. I also, by the end of the novel, don’t really feel like I knew him well enough. He puts himself in these situations and then laments about the situations he finds himself in. Really? The whole “A Grave” section nearly made me put the books down as the narrator talks, at length, about his relationship with his father that he just finds out is dying. Don’t get me wrong, the passages about the relationship with a red-haired boy was interesting. How they became physically close and then the red-haired boy makes him watch as he gets a blow job from a girl to prove his heterosexuality...piqued my interest. That gets destroyed when he starts talking about sexually suggestive things regarding his father and their showers together. I just really didn’t need that visual at all.
Mitko was probably the best fleshed out character, and yet I still felt completely distant from him. I wanted to know more and I wanted to get inside his perspective as it was clearly probably the superior perspective. However, I didn’t get that at all. And the language barrier, though understandable, kept me from having the closeness to Mitko that I wanted, and quite frankly needed.
The plot left a lot to be desired for such a thin novel. The two characters meet in a bathroom. Later, the narrator lets him come over to his place. After that they go to a seaside town and have a fight. They go without seeing each other for a long time (enter creepy Daddy issues). They reconnect after the narrator has a boyfriend and Mitko discovers he’s given the narrator syphilis. The narrator goes to a seaside town on a train with his mom. Creepy thoughts about a little boy being Mitko. Mitko comes back to say he’s dying. The end.
I won’t put much effort into reviewing this insubstantial novel. It was enough to take Greenwell’s follow up off my “to read” list. The characters were distant and unknowable, the plot was thin (like the novel itself), and I didn’t gleam much from it. It was a waste, but the upside was it was so thin it didn’t take up too much of my time.