A Review That Says: "An Unreadable Book."

Garth Greenwell's first novel, What Belongs to You (2016), uses mesmeric cadences. The world observed and the interior life are slowed down, the rhythms in the prose given a strange and powerful nervous energy, every nuance and angle offered their due. Narrated by a poet in a foreign country, the novel and its inflections suggest that feeling itself is almost foreign and hard to pin down; that it has to be outlined with many subclauses, digressions and asides. Language becomes a way of holding experience close before it dissolves in your mind. Some of the scenes in the book, such as when the narrator watches a boy on a train, have the aura of beautifully rich film, something captured with meticulous attention to every shift of light and atmosphere. These scenes are created with a great moody melancholy, the narrator fully aware how soon they will be over and how they must be secured before they crumble.

Colm Toibin, The New York Times Book Review, January 26, 2020