The Porous Boundaries of Longing
No contemporary writer I know of conveys desire better than Garth Greenwell. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, is an audacious wonder, whose nine stories of intensely textured personal interactions form an unusually hard to define novelistic whole. The book is an argument against convention, both structurally and on the character level—the melding of forms makes Cleanness feel both unique and familiar as it explores the boundaries of longing and the turbulence of love.
“Loving R.,” the molten core of the book, is devoted to a doomed romance. The surrounding six non-chronological stories are symmetrically arranged in pairs—each duo featuring a sort of inversion, flipping power dynamics between the lead and supporting characters. Even though these are ostensibly distinct narratives, the book’s larger plot gradually assembles in the reader’s mind. We learn that the unnamed American lead has