Images of a decaying Bulgaria haunt the book. The narrator, an American English teacher who is slowly abandoning his profession to become a writer (the same narrator as in What Belongs To You), travels across nine linked stories, meeting current and former students in encounters suffused with nurture, attraction, and regret, pursuing a relationship with a Portuguese college student, engaging in casual sex and political protest.
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.Garth Greenwell’s new work of fiction Cleanness, like his debut, What Belongs To You, takes place in post-Soviet Bulgaria, a site of economic devastation and hopelessness, of the “there is no alternative” politics of austerity and shock therapy.
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. 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. In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song. Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. In the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desire
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