Certainly the chapter "Decent People" brings to mind the political unrest that undergirds Kundera's work, a 2013 version of 1968 (so far as I can determine-I have almost no knowledge of such matters personally). Perhaps that regional element is what brings Kundera to mind, though Czechoslovakia is far from adjacent. If anything, this novel is a love letter to Bulgaria, certainly a country that many people often forget, or don't even know exists. The narrator has no name and all other characters are only identified by a letter, or their occupation. I read that book many years ago and perhaps it is too charitable a comparison, yet that is what comes to mind. The writing style is quite different, and though the subject matter is relatively similar, it is more high-brow than low-brow, almost The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the gay version. From the way they discussed Cleanness, he struck me as a next-generation version of Dennis Cooper, and after reading this, I would say that is roughly 66% accurate. I had no knowledge of Garth Greenwell until I heard about this book on the NY Times Book Review podcast.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |