Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Cleanness

The prose is the standout here - not to say that the look into the narrator's relationship with love and sex isn't interesting but enveloping it in touching, earnest, beautiful prose furnishes it with a contemplative edge that elevates it from a nosy peek or a straightforward write-up of an American expat's experiences in Bulgaria. The audiobook, narrated by the author, colours it in a way I doubt I would have thought of in text form too; an honest, but resigned acknowledgement of when these experiences don't mean enough or mean too much, like one long, heartfelt sigh.

In a Macmillan interview, Greenwell states he wanted to write "something that was 100% pornographic and 100% high art". This characterises the three explicit scenes pretty aptly. They are a strong challenge to anyone who disparages sex scenes as pure titillation. They point toward things the narrator is looking while still admitting the ugly parts.

The only part of the book that left me truly uncomfortable is also the part I can't find anyone else discussing - the narrator's final night out in Bulgaria at the end of the book with two of his ex-students. Artistically, it was an interesting mix of tense dread and youthful joy, but this is the only part of the book wherein I felt the author let his narrator off the hook a little. Not entirely -

Z's reactions still make the pit of your stomach drop and the narrator blanches with us at times, once wondering whether sexually assaulting his ex-student was being a 'caricature' of himself or himself 'without impediment'

- but I was looking forward to seeing how his sober self would process the night. Furthermore,

the dog scene read to me like smoothing over the violation, acting as a metaphor for allowing yourself some spots of moral dirt. But not all dirt is equal. It seemed to soon to make peace with predation, especially when it the only other instance of predation in the novel for our minds to go to is the abuse that so dogs his beloved R's footsteps. I'm not arguing against the inclusion of the narrator taking advantage of his ex-student, I just feel it was comparatively unexplored (interestingly, the only other part I felt similarly about was the longer-term effects of the narrator's own rape)

. The ending note sounded a little false to my ears after being trained on chapters of relentless honesty and self-reckoning.

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polkadotkat's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

My favorite quote was

There was joy in being a fool. Why had I spent my whole life avoiding it?

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kalchainein's review against another edition

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3.5

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nisanatreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Wowza. What a book. I heard before that Garth Greenwell is a writer that you can't get around when trying to delve into queer contemporary literature. Now I understand why. This book really gives insight into what it means to be queer in society today, especially in Eastern Europe, and in relation to politics.

The book contains stories of an American living in Sofia, Bulgaria, as a teacher for bilingual high schoolers. They all center around his queerness but highlight different aspects. There are stories that tackle his relationships with his students, his mentoring of queer youth and the responsibility he feels to make them feel understood and seen. Then there are stories that are hard to stomach (that in my opinion should've had trigger warnings!) because they showcase BDSM sex scenes that have nothing in common with what's depicted in popular culture today. But they're also psychological and deeply interesting to read because of the shifting dynamics between the men and cultures.

My favourite parts were whenever his boyfriend from Portugal came up because it felt uneasy but also like a whirlwind romance all at once. It made me appreciate how well Greenwell writes emotional turmoil. ❤️‍🩹

I have to admit that I know next to nothing about Bulgaria and Bulgarians. This novel makes a wonderful case of one day visiting. Obviously the political landscape is not what draws me in but rather the depiction of how politics and recent history have shaped this country and its people.

Find me on Instagram @nisanatreads

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januaryghosts's review against another edition

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jarred's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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remimicha's review against another edition

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I’m incredibly concerned at the lack of content warnings on past reviews. The ones I saw when I started to get an ick feeling during the first chapter are entirely insufficient. For those of you going into this expecting a beautiful piece of literary fiction: Don’t.

I’m alarmed at the number of reviews that refer to a rape scene as a sex scene. If you are a survivor of trauma please tread with extreme caution. The content warnings I placed under explicit/graphic were entered intentionally. As I only made it to the end of the second chapter this is not an exhaustive list. I’ve included more information as a spoiler using specific lines from the book. 0/10 absolutely did not finish.

Content warnings not included in the options:
Homophobic slurs, degradation, urine, victim blaming

The entirety of the second chapter is a rape scene. The way this author chose to go about handling it is abhorrent. It reads like trauma porn, described in unnecessarily vivid detail that is voyeuristic in nature. To begin with, we already know the harms of spreading misinformation about BDSM in literature (see sexual assault cases following the release of the 50 shades series), and this is a HARMFUL depiction of BDSM. The narrator and his intended partner for the scene are not fluent in the same languages which shows the complete disregard for how necessary communication is for consent. If the author was attempting to show the importance of consent they did an extremely poor job and there are much better ways to go about it. It is clear from certain pieces of the narrators internal dialogue that there is very little communication defining the limits and expectations of the scene which would be normative in any consensual interaction. Some of the narrators internal dialogue shows he and rapist were not privy to each others expectations and limits and misconstrue how a healthy dynamic would work. For example: “ I know there are men who like it, who go to great lengths to find others who will hurt them in exactly this way, though I’ve never been able to fathom the pleasure they take from it. But then there’s no fathoming pleasure, the forms it takes or their sources, nothing we can imagine is beyond it; however far beyond the pale of our own desires, for someone it is the intensest desire, the key to the latch of the self, or the promised key, a key that perhaps never turns “—this feels like a way to excuse a blatant disregard for boundaries and abuse. The way the author chose to approach the narrators experience feels like a violation itself. While a great deal of trauma survivors experience guilt and shame, which we see with the narrator, the way the author chose to depict this feeds into victim blaming narratives. There is no need to subject readers to potential retraumatization to show the audience the horrors of surviving trauma. If the authors goal is to show the complex nature of being closeted and the violence so many are subjected to they could have done so in a way that was supportive of the people who have actually experienced said violence and trauma. As a queer person who has survived trauma, this was tasteless and callous.

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orireading's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Quite beautiful, very intense. Check content warnings.

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