Cleanness

American author, poet, and literary critic Garth Greenwell’s second novel, Cleanness (2020) continues after the events of its prequel, What Belongs to You, following an unnamed American teacher who moves to Sofia, Bulgaria to work abroad. The chapters are standalone and anachronistic, but gradually build a coherent picture of the unnamed man (who is the narrator). The novel has been noted for its interesting use of temporality, narrative unreliability, and narrative fragmentation, capturing the chaos of modern society and subjectivity. The novel loosely tracks the narrator through an ill-fated love affair.

The novel takes place in three sections, each of which consists of three chapters. The first section, “Mentor,” seemingly references the narrator’s job as a teacher. During his lunch periods, he helps a young male pupil get through his adolescent heartache and come to terms with his sexuality. He assures the young man that these first pains of adulthood will one day be a story he can use to help others. The young man rejects the narrator’s view on pain and memory, arguing that he will never be so forgetful as to lose a sense of the depth of his former suffering. Eventually, he realizes that all feelings, good or bad, eventually give way in the current of time. The boy’s insight moves the narrator, reversing their mentor-mentee relationship. At the chapter’s conclusion, he remarks, “How much smaller I have become…through an erosion necessary to survival perhaps and perhaps still to be regretted, I’ve worn myself down to a bearable size.”

Other sections that deal more intimately with the narrator’s life are loosely based on Greenwell’s own intimate experiences. Two of the chapters depict scenes of sadomasochism; the narrator participates as both a dominant and a submissive partner and bears the consequences of his desires, both good and bad. Each pleasure and pain is depicted in precise detail. Though both experiences are consensual, they are also brutal and psychologically distressing. The narrator revisits his conclusion from the introductory chapter about feeling like an object that has been whittled down, saying, “I want to be nothing, I want to be nothing.” After he experiences an emotional breakdown during one of the encounters, his partner, who submitted to his abuse, consoles him, reminding him, “You don’t have to be like that.”



The remainder of the chapters mostly deal with the evolution of the narrator’s long-term relationship with a man, identified only as “R.” In “Cleanness,” the narrator recalls their first date at a cafe. He waxes poetic on the beauty of his partner. Later, he describes the gradual blending of the physical and emotional components of their relationship. Because they live in Bulgaria, the narrator and R cannot display their affection publicly without risking violence. Yet, he reflects that any shamefulness they feel for this reason is resolved whenever they meet together in private. Cleanness ends on this hopeful note, after the narrator and R return to Bulgaria from a vacation in Venice.