Through the Unyielding Lens

Garth Greenwell’s debut novel, What Belongs to You, opens with a four-line sentence containing five separate clauses. The sentences that follow, shockingly, become more complex and esoteric, words—coterminous, ubiquitous, autumnal—littering the first paragraph, sentences rarely shorter than three or four lines. After the first page, I had the distinct feeling that this book was either going to…