Garth published an essay yesterday in Publisher’s Weekly<\/em><\/a> that should be insightful for anyone thinking they’re going to sit down, write a novel, and get it published.<\/p>\n It’s a lonely expedition:<\/p>\n It took three years. I wrote the book by hand, in a series of slim spiral-bound notebooks I bought for a lev—about 70 cents—at a little stationery store on the way to school. They were wide ruled, meant for schoolchildren, and the ones I liked best had scenes of idealized village life on their covers, with the words Our Bulgaria<\/em> scrawled across the top in Cyrillic. Something about composing by hand in a foreign country in the early morning dark, without a computer and its irresistible distractions, with just a small lamp lighting the page, turned writing into the most intense privacy I had ever known. I was working in a kind of figurative dark, too, since I had never written fiction before and was feeling my way forward sentence by sentence, without a clear model or shape in mind. For long stretches, months at a time, a year, I didn’t show my pages to anyone; I wrote without imagining a reader, and so without the anxiety of judgment.<\/p>\n Though now he has been judged, at least a little bit.<\/p>\n The novel, What Belongs To You<\/a><\/em>, recently got an amazing advance review from Kirkus<\/em><\/a>: “The life of an American expat living in Bulgaria intersects repeatedly with that of a young gay<\/a> hustler in this gorgeous debut novel from Greenwell….This is a project of rare discernment and beauty, and it is not to be missed. A luminous, searing exploration of desire, alienation, and the powerful tattoo of the past.”<\/p>\n And Publisher’s Weekly<\/em><\/a>: “a brave and articulate psychological exploration of lust and desire.”<\/p>\n I’d like to personally congratulate Garth and tell y’all to go get What Belongs To You<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n I’d also encourage those of you who read to take a look at our BOOKS<\/a> channel for reviews like Lori Ostlund’s After the Parade<\/em><\/a>, Michael Klein’s When I Was a Twin<\/em><\/a>, and Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and The City: A Memoir<\/em><\/a>, as well as our TowleREAD<\/a> feature, where you’ll hear LGBT authors reading from their own works like Christopher Bollen reading from Orient<\/em><\/a>, James Sie reading from Still Life, Last Vegas<\/em><\/a>, and Larry Kramer reading from The American People: Volume 1<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n The post What Books Are You Reading Right Now? How About Some Suggestions…<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"greenwell\"](\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.towleroad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/greenwell.jpg?resize=250%2C300\")
Garth has been writing his own novel<\/a> for the past 3+ years and we’re excited here at Towleroad that it’s going to be on bookshelves in January.<\/p>\nTowleroad readers, suggest a good book based on what you’re<\/em> reading these days. What’s the last good book you read and what do you love about it? Please let us know below in the comments.<\/h2>\n