First published by The Times on 22 May 2020
Heartache and melancholy are knotted with uneasy eroticism in Garth Greenwell’s new novel, Cleanness – although it’s less a novel than a series of vignettes, telling a love story that from the beginning is haunted by its end.
Our protagonist is the same unnamed American literature teacher living in Sofia, Bulgaria who was depicted in Greenwell’s acclaimed 2016 debut, What Belongs to You — but it’s not a sequel. The author says the books can be read independently, but intermingle in ways that readers of the first book will enjoy.
What Belongs to You explored a man in a relationship with a male prostitute, Mitko, whom he’d met in the toilets at the National Palace of Culture, a cruising spot; this new volume takes a broader look at the protagonist’s emotional life in Sofia, and Mitko is nowhere to be seen.
References to the Arab Spring place the story in the years around 2013; the Bulgarian capital — a place where gay men don’t hold hands and Pride paraders risk being attacked — makes for a troubled, bleakly beautiful backdrop. It all plays into the sparseness of the novel, in which characters are identified only by their first initials; this meant lots of flicking back and forth to ascertain who everyone was, but names, like speech marks, have fallen out of fashion with literary novelists.
As we meet our American at the opening of Cleanness he is counselling an unhappy student, which recalls his own heartbreak. The book is divided into three parts, and the first and third paint, with a delicate touch, the atmosphere of this man’s life in Sofia: we see him with friends, with sexual partners, with students, although he is never at ease.
The mournfulness of the book is not straightforward. He has anonymous, sadomasochistic encounters with other men, vividly described, his arousal alternating with shame. Greenwell shows the pain of internalised homophobia — in one moment of consensual aggression the protagonist remembers the terror of his father approaching with a belt. We’re inside his head as he calls one partner a “faggot” during sex, using the language of hatred to invoke pleasure, and feeling a mix of relief and sorrow.
It’s in the central third, entitled “Loving R.”, that we meet the object of his affection. It’s poignantly told in snapshots. “Cleanness” is the title of a chapter in which a harrowing revelation ushers in intimacy between the two men; another focuses on the sweetness and agony of their last days together before R returns to his native Portugal. Greenwell paints the inner life of his main character in long, fluid sentences, full of hesitant desire and fear.
In his relationship with R, we see him reach a purer kind of joy. Uncovering a surprise stack of Christmas gifts from his boyfriend, he is moved; he feels “like my heart would burst”. Reflecting on that hackneyed phrase, he adds: “I was grateful for that too, the commonness of my feeling; I felt some stubborn strangeness in me ease, I felt like part of the human race.” That yearning for belonging makes for a tender tale.
Cleanness by Garth Greenwell, Picador, 240pp; £14.99, ebook £8.99