Greenwell offers restraint in service of release. This writer’s sentences are so dazzlingly fresh that it as if he has thrown his cape in the street in front of each one. It’s as if, while other writers offer data, he is providing metadata. Every detail in every scene glows with meaning. Greenwell has an uncanny gift, one that comes along rarely. You pick his novels up with asbestos mitts, and set them down upon trivets to protect your table from heat damage. writing about sex is altogether scorching.

“In much the way that other male American writers, such as Hemingway, Baldwin and Edmund White, have chosen Paris as the place in which their lone protagonist can be tested and changed, Greenwell uses Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, as his caldron … Greenwell displays an extraordinary skill at handling time … The writing about sex achieves an unusual depth of accuracy both about physical activity and emotional undercurrent … An exquisite piece of writing that uses a simple plaintive system to create a complex emotional effect … One of the problems that any gay writer faces is how to depict happiness … Greenwell fully explores what fear and secrecy and solitude look like for gay men … However, in the second section of his book, called ‘Loving R.,’ he dramatizes happiness … ‘The Frog King,’ rivals John Updike’s ‘The Happiest I Have Been,’ set in the same Christmas season, as a great American story about happiness.” – Colm Tóibín, The New York Times Book Review Watch the launch of Cleanness at the Center for Fiction, featuring a conversation between Garth Greenwell and Andrea Lawlor Read a conversation between Garth Greenwell and FSG Publisher, Mitzi Angel, about Cleanness “Compassion, that supreme quality in a fiction writer, is a main source of Greenwell’s power.” - Sigrid Nunez, The New York Review of Books He is certainly the most exhilarating.” - Times Literary Supplement “Greenwell may be the finest writer of sex currently at work. It’s as if, while other writers offer data, he is offering metadata.” - Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Incandescent … Greenwell has an uncanny gift, one that comes along rarely. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY TIME, THE WASHINGTON POST, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, NPR, THE OBSERVER, MOTHER JONES, HARPER’S BAZAAR, THE TELEGRAPH, OPRAH MAGAZINE, KIRKUS, THE BBC, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, LA VANGUARDIA (SPAIN), EL PAIS (SPAIN), THE IRISH TIMES, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, LITHUB, BUZZFEED, ESQUIRE, THE WHITE REVIEW, REFINERY29, ENTROPY, THRILLIST, ONE GRAND, XTRA MAGAZINE, i-D, FIVE BOOKS, AGNI, THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW, THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, & SCRIBD LONGLISTED FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX SADE (DEUXIEME SELECTION) A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR

Cleanness by garth greenwell