Here, gay desire remains a cultural taboo, so that expressing one of the most basic of human emotions is quite a big deal, with plenty at stake beyond “self-gratification.”īecause the novel opens with a man cruising for sex in a public bathroom, some readers may initially be tempted to write off “What Belongs to You” as gay fiction. The book is set in contemporary Bulgaria, still struggling to move on from its Communist past. Garth Greenwell’s masterly debut novel, “What Belongs to You,” provides a ringing answer to Updike’s willfully dense question. Updike, the author of the sex romp “Couples” (among other sexually frank novels), complained that Hollinghurst’s “relentlessly gay” fiction bored him because in gay stories “nothing is at stake but self-gratification.” In contrast, stories with heterosexual characters “involve perpetuation of the species and the ancient, sacralized structures of the family.”Įssentially, Updike is asking: What’s the big deal? It’s just sex. In a controversial 1999 New Yorker review of Alan Hollinghurst’s novel “The Spell,” John Updike summed up a common prejudice about gay stories: namely, that they have nothing to interest straight readers.
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