INTERNATIONAL PRESS FOR WHAT BELONGS TO YOU

WRITTEN REVIEWS

‘The various settings and transactions involved are described with a detached, carefully styled literary brutalism that feels very of the moment; however, the emotional geography of the story could have come straight from Proust. Alienated sex with a financially dependent and forever unknowable object of desire; the unresolved trauma of parental rejection; the overriding conviction that guilt-stained autobiographical disclosure is what gay men do best – at times I felt as if I was reading an updated, gender-swapped rewrite of La Prisonnière. As it turns out, this is the point. By the end of this short, intense novel it becomes clear that the collision between our hard-won new capacity for frankness and a deep-rooted sense of archaic guilt and grief is precisely Greenwell’s subject. … the considerable beauties of the prose... The interior battle with childhood traumas that first led the narrator to look for love in such a disastrously inappropriate place reaches a new elegiac ferocity. This, it turns out, is not a novel about hustlers at all, but about the lasting damage that a loveless childhood can inflict… The last sequence includes some marvellous vignettes of loving kindness between parents and children, but they are presented as something that only other people can ever have, and the final pages of the book are memorable for their bleak and desperate sadness.’ Guardian UK - full review here

‘Mr. Greenwell remains a writer who opens chasms rather than builds substandard bridges. He is a subtle observer of human interactions. He underscores the way expressions of love are nearly always, in part, performance.’ New York Times - full review here

‘Garth Greenwell's first novel is gilded with the kind of praise that debut writers might never dare to imagine for themselves. The quotes sprinkle the book cover like a coat of glitter, marking it out for greatness… On reading this slight book – the size of a novella with the gravity of a novel – I realise that none of it is hyperbole. The praise is earned… first, Greenwell's abundant gifts: the language, Hanya Yanagihara says on the book sticker, is "as beautiful and vivid as poetry". To speak in such an approximation, though, might sell it short. Little here is metaphoric though no word is spare. Every

utterance seems imbued with thought that is deep and beautiful in its clarity’ Independent UK (lead review) – full review here

‘What Belongs to You is Garth Greenwell’s first novel, but it arrives in this country decked out with praise from his native America… When that volume of applause carries across the Atlantic it tends to herald a self-consciously ambitious doorstopper of a book, but What Belongs to You is a refreshingly slim, subdued and contemplative piece of work… Greenwell writes in long, consummately nuanced sentences, strung with insights and soaked in melancholy… What Belongs to You is an uncommonly sensitive, intelligent and poignant novel’ Sunday Times UK (lead fiction review)

‘I had thought of Hollinghurst as I read What Belongs to You, Greenwell’s astonishingly assured debut novel, but questioned whether the parallel came to mind because both writers create vivid, enclosed worlds filled with ambiguous and shifting relationships between gay men. In fact, though, the greater similarity lies in their ability to blend a lyrical prose – the prose of longing, missed connections, grasped pleasures – with an almost uncanny depth of observation… [The] middle section [is] a masterful study in alienation and escape… Like the writers he admires, WG Sebald, Thomas Bernhard and Javier Marías, he is drawn to the idea of a body of work that seems as though it is all one book, or, as with Sebald in particular, a territory in which the reader wanders. It is perhaps too soon to say precisely what Greenwell’s own fictional territory will look like – but even this early on, the landscape looks too riveting to miss’ from Alex Clark’s interview in the Guardian UK – full text here

‘One of the few novels I’ve read which feels like it offers an authentic account of what growing up is like for gay people in western societies… Greenwell’s novel is at its most affecting when subtly pushing readers to examine their own attitudes and motives… By illuminating the dividing lines in our unequal world, Greenwell’s novel challenges us to think about privilege, especially our own… Erotic holding, emotional withholding and the question of who holds power in a relationship are all examined in a work which gripped me all the way to its sad and beautiful ending’ Independent on Sunday UK – full review here

Garth wrote an incredible BuzzFeed essay on cruising and/as poetry.

RADIO AND PODCASTS

‘A truly stunning debut… a masterpiece… A literary star is born’ from the interview by Janice Forsyth, BBC Radio Scotland – interview here (21mins30)

Monocle 24, where Cathy Rentzenbrink described it as ‘a slim novel, yes, but a slim masterpiece’.

‘[An] extraordinary new talent… A huge amount of fans, I’m quite sure, for this fantastic book’ from the interview by Georgina Godwin on Monocle 24 – full interview here

‘I was blown away by [What Belongs to You]’ from the interview by Farhana Gani on the Reader’s Digest podcast – full interview here (22mins40)

Interview on Bookanista Podcast

Interview on You Wrote the Book! Podcast

Ireland RTE’s ‘The Book Show’ and on GCN

BBC Arts: Garth’s interview

BBC Radio 4 (both ‘Front Row’ and ‘Open Book’)