Cleanness, Garth Greenwell
Cleanness, Garth Greenwell
1 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Cleanness

Author: Garth Greenwell

Narrator: Garth Greenwell

Unabridged: 7 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/14/2020


Synopsis

"Garth Greenwell’s superb narration makes a powerful case for authors reading their own work. This bleak, honest novel is about the impossibility of knowing all the complicated truths of a person. Though the novel includes dialogue, Greenwell doesn’t alter his voice as he shifts between characters, a choice that adds to the intensity and power of the first-person point of view." -- BookTrib

This program is read by the author.

In the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desire. A New York Times Notable Books of 2020

Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song.

In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves.

Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell’s beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared “an instant classic” by The New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, he transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers.

About Garth Greenwell

Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. He lives in Iowa City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Adam

Update: my review for Guernica [URL not allowed] What a book - audacious, innovative, sometimes disturbing, sometimes romantic. It feels like a short story collection but in many ways functions as a novel, or perhaps more like a symphony. The masterful center of CLEANNESS shows 3 vignettes from......more

Goodreads review by Meike

I have a hunch that this major release will be polarizing, which only speaks to its poetic power and daring structure - I am deeply impressed by Greenwell's achievement. At the heart, this is a story about a gay American teacher in Sofia, Bulgaria, who wins and loses the heart of a young man from Li......more

This book was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. There are books that exist as an attempt to recreate reality. They morph, becoming a string of words that become code—still prose—flowing from page to your body. Imbuing themselves into your very essence. As though slotting the......more

Goodreads review by Kai

“Anything I am you have use for is yours.” Why not start off this review by saying that Cleanness includes the most intense sex scene I’ve ever read? Cause there are quite a few descriptions of gay intimacy in this novel and they’re all rather...memorable. Now before we get to the rest of it there’s p......more


Awards

  • Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year
  • Time Magazine Best Books of the Year
  • Lambda Literary Award - Nominee
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • The Telegraph (UK) Best Books of the Year
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
  • New Yorker Best Books of the Year
  • NPR Best Book of the Year