What Belongs to You

Starred review from October 5, 2015
With detailed prose, Greenwell’s debut relays the story of an unnamed American college professor, living and teaching in Bulgaria, who develops a sexual relationship with a nomadic male prostitute named Mitko. Initially meeting in public bathroom stalls at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, the pair shift their dates to the professor’s apartment and eventually decide to travel to Varna, Mitko’s hometown on the Black Sea, for a brief respite. However, Mitko’s violent side leaves Greenwell’s protagonist afraid for his own safety. The two part ways, and years pass before Mitko, ravaged by time and homelessness, reenters the professor’s life. Now in a committed long-distance relationship, the instructor battles his erotic yearning and faces increasing discomfort around his former lover, suspecting the prostitute’s acts of kindness and care are nothing more than a lure for financial support. The book breaks up the adult protagonist’s story with a long middle section devoted to exploring the professor’s difficult childhood, as well as his first love, and it is here that the man’s struggles—sexual and emotional—come alive. Greenwell’s novel is a brave and articulate psychological exploration of lust and desire, and though his rich language often carries the book (rather than the plot), the carnal pain on display is striking.

Starred review from October 15, 2015
The life of an American expat living in Bulgaria intersects repeatedly with that of a young gay hustler in this gorgeous debut novel from Greenwell. The unnamed narrator--an English teacher who lives in the city of Sofia--has an addiction, and that addiction's name is Mitko. After they meet for the first time in a public bathroom, Mitko flits in and out of the narrator's life with abandon, alternating among offers of sex, hints at love, threats, blackmail, hunger, illness, neediness, rage, and despair. Mitko is beautiful, self-assured, and an enigma, and the narrator finds it hard to resist him. His growth is in his responses, which range from acquiescence to refusal, and it is this engine that propels the reader forward through a series of tenuously connected chapters that advance in irregular chronological intervals. This is a novel with a short story sensibility; many of the chapters stand on their own, hanging together only in the loosest sense. This is a feature, not a bug: instead of aggressively pursuing a series of tightly woven plotlines, readers may have the sense that they're peering through the narrator's window randomly and of their own free will, observing his latest state each time. As for the narrator, he can only move forward if he interrogates his past--the question is, will he be able to? The prose here is supple and responsive, and Sofia teems with beauty and decay. Mitko lights up scenes like a firecracker and haunts the ones where he's absent--a large segment of the novel where he does not appear still vibrates with his energy--but the protagonist too is a source of gentle, steady illumination as he grapples with his cravings, memories, fears, and grief. This is a project of rare discernment and beauty, and it is not to be missed. A luminous, searing exploration of desire, alienation, and the powerful tattoo of the past.

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August 1, 2015
This sexually frank, deeply felt, and admirably constructed first novel takes us into a general culture most American readers will have no familiarity withcontemporary Bulgariaand, further, into a subset of that culture that will be completely foreign to such readers, the gay netherworld of the capital city, Sofia. The opening scenethe novel is told in first personintroduces us to the two participants and sets the tone that will reign throughout. The narrator, a gay American expat who teaches in a Sofia school, seeks sexual trade in the bathroom of the National Palace of Culture, where one day he encounters a hustler named Mitko. Immediately attracted tono, mesmerized byMitko, the two men fall into an uneasy relationship. Mitko is out for what he can get from the rich American. The narrator longs for intimacy, an abiding urge that stems from the rejection he felt as a boy from his father. This provocative tale rests on the themeto which we can all respondof the human need for possession, both emotional and sexual.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)