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Cleanness

by Garth Greenwell

Narrator Garth Greenwell

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Length 7 hours 11 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“Cleanness is a trance-inducing read. I started this book and was immediately swept up in it, and before I knew it, hours had passed. Greenwell describes human relationships in raw, beautiful detail while also exploring the power dynamics at play. If Cleanness is not one of my favorite books of 2020, it will have been a spectacular year for books.”
— Hunter Gillum • Beaverdale Books

Bookseller recommendation

“What a rare treasure! Garth Greenwell delivers an unrepentant confession, a spectrum of homoeroticism, a meeting of cultures in confined spaces. The narrator submits and dominates in turns, savoring the subtle flavors of each. His identity is a compound function of nationalities and roles. He observes and reports without judgment, sometimes suffering from his own objectivity. At the foundation of this work is a love for language that settles for no less than masterful description.”
— Jalen • Changing Hands

Bookseller recommendation

“I liked What Belongs to You, but I LOVED Cleanness. In this honest and utterly human work, Greenwell revisits the narrator and world of his previous novel. In beautifully crafted prose, he deftly captures the complexities of human interiority, identity, and sexuality. Where What Belongs to You offered a deep dive into the narrator's sense of self through the lens of a single relationship, Cleanness uses a kaleidoscopic and episodic structure to great effect. We move easily from the intimately personal to the global and political. Throughout the collection, Greenwell's narrator offers a deeply resonant look at growing up and living as a gay man, both in the American South and in Eastern Europe; falling in and out of love; and sex as an act of healing and of self-destruction. Greenwell is a gem of a writer, and he's a truly stellar reader. I both read a copy and listened to the audiobook, and Cleanness gains even more immediacy and empathy when it's voiced. Slim but never light, this volume cements Greenwell's place in my personal literary canon alongside the likes of Virginia Woolf. ”
— Rayne • Rediscovered Books

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

"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.

Fiction LGBTQIA+ Fiction Fiction - Literary

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.