A common yet furtive encounter carries with it the potential to unravel an American expat teaching in Sofia, Bulgaria. The bathrooms at the National Palace of Culture have a reputation for cruising. "There was only one reason for men to be standing there," and this young man seems to have found his reason in Mitko, a handsome and charming hustler ready to please for the right price. Were matters to end there, with a simple transaction, the teacher's world might have gone on turning undisturbed, but his obsession with Mitko (or is it Mitko's dependence on him?) begins to transgress more and more boundaries, complicating his understanding of intimacy, desire and himself.
Right from its heady, lusty outset, Garth Greenwell's ravishing debut novel, What Belongs to You, whirls into a storm both erotically and psychologically charged. As the teacher's desire for Mitko--his company as well as his body--intensifies, he allows the man broader and freer access to his living space, his money, his belongings, his time.
In thoughtful, lyrical prose, Greenwell conjures an ill-at-ease atmosphere to weigh heavily over this constricting imbroglio: "It seemed to me there was no attitude toward Mitko I could take that would let me be at once sufficiently compassionate and sufficiently free, so that I wavered between eagerness and distance." The ambivalence between the two men nears a panicking pitch, further exacerbated by devastating news from the States.
What Belongs to You is as deliciously unpredictable as the object of the narrator's affection. At once tense, introspective, vexing and erotic, it easily entwines itself with a willing reader, and lingers. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness