Description
Village Book Club – „Cleanness“ by Gareth Greenwell (2020)
Host: Marco Astolfi
“Cleanness” is a collection of six short stories thematically and structurally connected, that in many ways functions as a novel.
The main character is an American high school teacher living in Sofia, Bulgaria. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad. aben. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds.
As well as presenting masterful descriptions of explicit queer BDSM sex scenes – “At times in this book, I had the goal of writing a scene that was, at once, one hundred percent pornographic and one hundred percent high art”, Greenwell explains – the book takes on complicated questions of masculinity, power dynamics, and cultural exchange.
About the Village Book Club
Book lovers and bookworms have been meeting on a bimonthly basis to discuss works of fiction and non-fiction (novels, biographies, and essays) focused on or related to GBTQ themes and personalities.
Anticipating insightful discussions, we choose the next book two months in advance.
