No dust jacket. - What a book - audacious, innovative, sometimes disturbing, sometimes romantic. It feels like a short story collection but in many ways functions as a novel, or perhaps more like a symphony. The masterful center of CLEANNESS shows 3 vignettes from the lead's (this isn't a spoiler) doomed romance. The 6 non-chronological stories that surround it initially seem disconnected, but are linked, both thematically and structurally. (1 and 6 are about the students of the lead, a high school teacher in Bulgaria; 2 and 5 are centered on explicit queer BDSM sex scenes after the break-up; 3 and 4 are about fracturing in group dynamics and further color in the local details of the book). The ethics of the lead are in flux, particularly in the final story, which reminds me greatly of Knausgaard's MY STRUGGLE 4, and the book takes on complicated questions of masculinity, power dynamics, and cultural exchange throughout. I savored it, was challenged by it, and will come back to it. #nonfiction#bodymindspirit#hardcover#queer#sexuality

ISBN: 9780374124588