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Greenland
A dazzling, debut novel-within-a-novel in the vein of The Prophets and Memorial, about a young author writing about the secret love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl--in which Mohammed's story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction.
In 1919, Mohammed el Adl, the young Egyptian lover of British author E. M. Forster, spent six months in a jail cell. A century later, Kip Starling has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement study with a pistol and twenty-one gallons of Poland Spring to write Mohammed's story.
Kip has only three weeks until his publisher's deadline to immerse himself in the mind of Mohammed who, like Kip, is Black, queer, an Other. The similarities don't end there. Both of their lives have been deeply affected by their confrontations with Whiteness, homophobia, their upper crust education, and their white romantic partners. As Kip immerses himself in his writing, Mohammed's story - and then Mohammed himself - begins to speak to him, and his life becomes a Proustian portal into Kip's own memories and psyche. Greenland seamlessly conjures two distinct yet overlapping worlds where the past mirrors the present, and the artist's journey transforms into a quest for truth that offers a world of possibility.
Electric and unforgettable, David Santos Donaldson's tour de force excavates the dream of white assimilation, the foibles of interracial relationships, and not only the legacy of a literary giant, but literature itself.
In 1919, Mohammed el Adl, the young Egyptian lover of British author E. M. Forster, spent six months in a jail cell. A century later, Kip Starling has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement study with a pistol and twenty-one gallons of Poland Spring to write Mohammed's story.
Kip has only three weeks until his publisher's deadline to immerse himself in the mind of Mohammed who, like Kip, is Black, queer, an Other. The similarities don't end there. Both of their lives have been deeply affected by their confrontations with Whiteness, homophobia, their upper crust education, and their white romantic partners. As Kip immerses himself in his writing, Mohammed's story - and then Mohammed himself - begins to speak to him, and his life becomes a Proustian portal into Kip's own memories and psyche. Greenland seamlessly conjures two distinct yet overlapping worlds where the past mirrors the present, and the artist's journey transforms into a quest for truth that offers a world of possibility.
Electric and unforgettable, David Santos Donaldson's tour de force excavates the dream of white assimilation, the foibles of interracial relationships, and not only the legacy of a literary giant, but literature itself.
326 pages, Hardcover
First published May 3, 2022
About the author
David Santos Donaldson
1 book62 followersDavid Santos Donaldson was raised in Nassau, Bahamas, and has lived in India, Spain, and the United States. He attended Wesleyan University and the Drama Division of The Juilliard School, and his plays have been commissioned by the Public Theater. He was a finalist for the Urban Stages Emerging Playwright Award and has worked as the Artistic Director for the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts in Nassau, Bahamas. Donaldson is currently a practicing psychotherapist and divides his time between Brooklyn, New York, and Seville, Spain. Greenland is his first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 151 reviews
October 26, 2022
a lot happened here!
and yet, in other ways, very little occurred at all!
satire is a genre i find very difficult to like, or maybe a genre that's very hard to do right - and i think that is one of my rare un-unpopular opinions, because the average ratings of this genre tend to drag on this website. (although not on this one!)
i found this to be biting and clever, but occasionally a little self-indulgent, or maybe just finding itself having bitten off more than it could chew.
too much happens, bizarreness comes in waves, and the ending feels out of place and ultimately unsatisfying.
but somehow its overall intelligence is enough to save it? and that opinions's one of the usual unpopular ones anyway.
bottom line: a lot of potential left unfulfilled for me!
----------------
tbr review
this is the eeriest cover of all time and of course i requested an arc.
(thanks to netgalley for it)
and yet, in other ways, very little occurred at all!
satire is a genre i find very difficult to like, or maybe a genre that's very hard to do right - and i think that is one of my rare un-unpopular opinions, because the average ratings of this genre tend to drag on this website. (although not on this one!)
i found this to be biting and clever, but occasionally a little self-indulgent, or maybe just finding itself having bitten off more than it could chew.
too much happens, bizarreness comes in waves, and the ending feels out of place and ultimately unsatisfying.
but somehow its overall intelligence is enough to save it? and that opinions's one of the usual unpopular ones anyway.
bottom line: a lot of potential left unfulfilled for me!
----------------
tbr review
this is the eeriest cover of all time and of course i requested an arc.
(thanks to netgalley for it)
April 8, 2022
Greenland is the captivating and unusual story of Kip, a Black queer author who has three weeks to write a book about the secret love affair E.M. Forster had with Mohammed el Adl.
The book starts when Kip locks himself in the basement for three weeks. He badly wants to be a published author, and if he can write the story from Mohammed’s point of view, he’ll be offered a contract. While trying to write the story, Kip often gets distracted. He looks at his own life, the choices he made and how Mohammed handled things.
At first, I found it a bit difficult to get into the story, but I couldn't stop reading after a few chapters. In this fascinating book, David Santos Donaldson seamlessly interweaves Kip’s and Mohammed’s lives. Both men have so much in common, they’re Black, queer, and are in a relationship with white men. But this story is about more. It’s about the cost of friendship, the role that books and poems (by Walt Whitman) play in their lives, and most of all, it’s about being seen. Truly being seen. Kip’s reason why he wants to publish his book so badly touched me. As a Black, gay man, he needs the world to say, I see you. You matter. I know you exist.
Greenland is an honest and sometimes raw book. A refreshing read, and I highly recommend this story!
I received an ARC from Amistad and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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The book starts when Kip locks himself in the basement for three weeks. He badly wants to be a published author, and if he can write the story from Mohammed’s point of view, he’ll be offered a contract. While trying to write the story, Kip often gets distracted. He looks at his own life, the choices he made and how Mohammed handled things.
At first, I found it a bit difficult to get into the story, but I couldn't stop reading after a few chapters. In this fascinating book, David Santos Donaldson seamlessly interweaves Kip’s and Mohammed’s lives. Both men have so much in common, they’re Black, queer, and are in a relationship with white men. But this story is about more. It’s about the cost of friendship, the role that books and poems (by Walt Whitman) play in their lives, and most of all, it’s about being seen. Truly being seen. Kip’s reason why he wants to publish his book so badly touched me. As a Black, gay man, he needs the world to say, I see you. You matter. I know you exist.
Greenland is an honest and sometimes raw book. A refreshing read, and I highly recommend this story!
I received an ARC from Amistad and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Follow me on Instagram
January 22, 2023
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Greenland is characterized by a mordant, erudite satire that I have come to associate with authors such as Zadie Smith, Deborah Levy, and Edward St. Aubyn. David Santos Donaldson's insight into academia & creative burnout brought to mind the work of Weike Wang, Elaine Hsieh Chou, David Hoon Kim, and Jo Hamya. Similarly to these authors, Donaldson presents readers with a young(ish) main character who is in the midst of a bizarre existential crisis. There were elements of Donaldson’s storytelling that I rather appreciated as they reminded me of Helen Oyeyemi and Elif Batuman, in that Greenland is consistently absurd in its tone and in its engagement with its various subject matters so that we have many scenes which manage to be both surreal yet oddly realistic. Similarly to the protagonists of those authors, Kip makes for a hyperalert yet frustratingly naïve narrator whose inner monologue is rather navel-gazey, as he obsesses over himself & the perception others have of him and (over)-intellectualizes even the banalest and most fleeting of his ideas/opinions. Whereas Selin's ruminations in The Idiot have to do with language and philosophy, central to Kip’s narrative are race, history, and books, which allow for an intertextual dimension which really enriches his story.
I think this novel had a lot of potential, sadly sometimes this potential was wasted so that the story came across as self-indulgent and too intent on being clever and satirical. Still, the narration has this playfulness to it that really works in the story’s favour and the author’s social commentary is very much on point, as it manages to be witty & razor-sharp. Donaldson’s exploration of his main character’s identity, his uneasy relationship with widely accepted ideals of masculinity & Blackness, and his experiences with racism in academia and in intimate relationships (with his partner and best friend), are some of the novel’s strongest aspects, and I admired how Donaldson was able to address serious and topical issues with both humor and depth.
The story has a rather freewheeling structure as much of the narrative takes place in a confined setting: a basement study in Brooklyn. Kip Starling is a gay man in his thirties who is convinced that the only way he can meet his prospective publisher’s deadline is by locking himself in his study. He needs to revise his book on the love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl, which he initially had written from Forster’s pov, but now has to write from Mohammed's one. Kip’s reimaging of Mohammed’s life and affair are heavily influenced by his own personal experiences, and soon enough he struggles to distinguish fact from fiction, reality from fantasy.
The narrative switches from Kip in the basement and the story he is writing. As Kip writes about Mohammed we learn more about him: he lives with his older white partner, an American therapist named Ben, who just recently broke up with him; he had a big fight with Concha, his best-friend months prior and the two have not yet mended things; he is British and struggled a lot to fit in with his American peers at university; he is very much experiencing a major identity crisis. Kip's speculations into philosophy and spirituality, into whiteness and queerness, are characterised by a wry millennial tone, one that was for the most part rather amusing. The sheer absurdity of the scenario and of Kip’s increasingly frenzied inner monologue result in an offbeat narrative, one that is often unapologetically weird and nonsensical.
In the latter part of the novel we follow Kip as he embarks on a physical and possibly mystical journey, one that sees him confronting his relationship with whiteness, literature, and history. Here the story takes even more of a fantastical turn as the line between Kip’s story and Mohammed’s disappears almost completely, and it is very much left to the readers' interpretation to ascertain how unreliable a narrator Kip is.
Sure, at times Kip’s intellectualizing grated on me, as it resulted in some verbose & florid passages that really added little to his story. The satire too sometimes feels too heavy-handed so that the characters and scenarios appear cartoonish, crass even, and in this way, I was reminded of Version Control by Dexter Palmer & My Education by Susan Choi.
The female characters, from the way they were described to the way their personalities were portrayed, left a lot to be desired. And at times it seemed that the story minimises Kip’s sexism because he’s not straight, but that didn't quite sit right with me. One of the worst offenders is Concha, not because she is intentionally unlikeable (the way she fetishes and eroticises Blackness is schifo) but because she is the kind of Mediterranean character that I usually associate with English & American authors. They are passionate & hot-blooded, and often over-sexualised and prone to expressing quaint opinions about life, marriage, love, and sex. Concha is the type of character that I would expect to encounter in a book by Wilkie Collins or Agatha Christie, not in a book published in 2022 and that has a contemporary setting. Of course, when speaking about her Kip has to mention flamenco or emphasize how she goes on about men’s virility and whatnot. She is supposedly in love with Kip, and he knows this and doesn’t exactly do anything about it which leads him to feel guilty about the way he handled their relationship but I for one questioned the validity of their friendship. I just didn’t believe in it. Not because all friendships have to be nice and easy (i quite like the slightly competitive and peculiar bond between selin and svetlana in batuman’s books) but they have to be credible, and because Concha is such a cartoonish character who spouts the kind of ‘opinions’ that reek of scientific racism, I questioned what Kip saw in her. The narrative makes it seem like she’s funny purely because she’s Spanish, and has eccentric Spanish ways/views…le sigh. I was very much over her. She has no redeeming qualities nor is she horribly toxic in a particularly memorable or credible way.
Kip’s partner also was rather one-dimensional, and I didn’t like that the narrative tries to paint him in an ultimately ‘he-is-not-so-bad’ light when again his microaggressions are of the scientific racist variety. Yeah, he’s white so inevitably he will make remarks that reek of his white privilege but the stuff he says are of the there-is-no-going-back variety. And to be honest he doesn’t really have much of a personality, other than being kind of pathetic and ignorant. I just found him rather unpleasant and icky. Once again, I struggled to believe in their relationship, as I did not really get what drew these two men together, nor did the glimpses into their relationship make their romantic and sexual relationship more convincing. As I said, I can find complicated and f*cked up relationships affecting, which is why I love authors like Brandon Taylor and Donna Tartt.
But I could have easily looked past Kip's relationship with these two characters whose presence in the book is after all mostly relegated to flashbacks (i think we hear their disembodied voices while kip is in his self-imposed imprisonment). This story is mainly about Kip and the existential clusterf*ck he experiences. The author presents us with an experimental character study, one that is playfully surrealistic yet surprisingly touching and insightful. The narrative’s intertextuality enriches the text, as Kip often refers to the lives and works of other authors (for example kip refers to W. E. B. Du Bois' double consciousness, Walt Whitman, Toni Morrison, and Fyodor Dostoevsky) as we read of Kip’s experiences in white-dominated places as well as his struggle to ‘acclimatize’ to American culture. As a Black gay man, Kip feels and is made to feel othered, and much of the narrative explores this notion of otherness and there are many awkward instances, of him not fitting in or attempting to connect to others, that brought to mind cringe-comedy shows like Fleabag & Chewing Gum. Sure, I would have liked to learn more about his family and his childhood but by focusing almost exclusively on his adulthood Donaldson still achieves a compelling character analysis.
What I struggled to look past was the story within the story, that is the sections we get from Kip’s book. While I love reading books centred on characters who are aspiring or established authors, for example Writers & Lovers, if said books include sections of writing from these fictional authors...these are of questionable quality. And the chapters from Kip's book...were, how shall I put it, not good. Words like pitiful, bad, and ridiculous come to mind when I think back to them. Atrocious even. The writing was laboured, the storytelling sensationalistic, and the characters, who are supposedly existing in 1919 Egypt, possessed rather modern sensibilities. Sure, you could say this was intentionally pointing to Kip’s over-identifying with his protagonist…yet, having these sections from his book made the parallels between his story and Mohammed’s one seem forced, gimmicky even. Personally, I would have preferred if we’d just gotten a quote from his book at the begging of each chapter or something, but having to read Kip’s book bogged down Kip’s own narrative and made me feel less engaged in what I was reading. I also really didn’t like Kip’s Forster, a generically effete Edwardian man who lacks a moral backbone. Again, was I meant to believe that he was in love with Mohammed? And vice versa? It seemed that Mohammed was mostly revolted by him, and while I can appreciate books that have very toxic relationships or unromantic love stories, here I just didn’t buy into them.
The trajectory of Kip’s journey also risked being a bit too Eat Pray Love with Kip having an ‘awakening’ in Greenland. Sure, he isn't a blonde straight woman, but the way his narrative portrays Aguta, an Inuit woman, yeah...it wasn't great. In Greenland, he comes across someone who shares his very traumatic experiences and the narrative is very flippant about the whole thing, which didn’t sit right with me in that it felt gratuitous and exaggerated.
Quite a few things would have been more effective or amusing if they hadn't been stretched out so long, for instance, I would have enjoyed that chapter on Idris Elba if that information had been given us over the course of a paragraph or two (as opposed to pages). I also failed to get those asides on the body electric (i think it was the body electric).
All in all, I have rather conflicted feelings about Greenland. On the one hand, it was inventive and amusive, on the other, it was sometimes tasteless and it had a lot of cartoonish elements that just struck me as unfunny and self-indulgent. The verbose intellectualism at play here lacked the precise dry humor of Batuman's The Idiot and instead were more inaccessible and trying too hard to be clever & mean, bringing to mind Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi & Cho's My Education (which may very well appeal to some readers, just not me at this point in my life).
Nevertheless, the writing could also be frothy and fun, Kip's shrewd reflections on race, belonging, class, and history made me think of one of my favourite authors, Danzy Senna. Additionally, the narrative made me add An African in Greenland to my tbr-pile.
Considering this is a debut novel, I have to say it is a surprisingly memorable one (sadly i find a lot of debut novels to be a bit too vanilla-ey for my taste) and it has definitely succeeded in making me interested in checking out Donaldson's future work.
Greenland is characterized by a mordant, erudite satire that I have come to associate with authors such as Zadie Smith, Deborah Levy, and Edward St. Aubyn. David Santos Donaldson's insight into academia & creative burnout brought to mind the work of Weike Wang, Elaine Hsieh Chou, David Hoon Kim, and Jo Hamya. Similarly to these authors, Donaldson presents readers with a young(ish) main character who is in the midst of a bizarre existential crisis. There were elements of Donaldson’s storytelling that I rather appreciated as they reminded me of Helen Oyeyemi and Elif Batuman, in that Greenland is consistently absurd in its tone and in its engagement with its various subject matters so that we have many scenes which manage to be both surreal yet oddly realistic. Similarly to the protagonists of those authors, Kip makes for a hyperalert yet frustratingly naïve narrator whose inner monologue is rather navel-gazey, as he obsesses over himself & the perception others have of him and (over)-intellectualizes even the banalest and most fleeting of his ideas/opinions. Whereas Selin's ruminations in The Idiot have to do with language and philosophy, central to Kip’s narrative are race, history, and books, which allow for an intertextual dimension which really enriches his story.
I think this novel had a lot of potential, sadly sometimes this potential was wasted so that the story came across as self-indulgent and too intent on being clever and satirical. Still, the narration has this playfulness to it that really works in the story’s favour and the author’s social commentary is very much on point, as it manages to be witty & razor-sharp. Donaldson’s exploration of his main character’s identity, his uneasy relationship with widely accepted ideals of masculinity & Blackness, and his experiences with racism in academia and in intimate relationships (with his partner and best friend), are some of the novel’s strongest aspects, and I admired how Donaldson was able to address serious and topical issues with both humor and depth.
The story has a rather freewheeling structure as much of the narrative takes place in a confined setting: a basement study in Brooklyn. Kip Starling is a gay man in his thirties who is convinced that the only way he can meet his prospective publisher’s deadline is by locking himself in his study. He needs to revise his book on the love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl, which he initially had written from Forster’s pov, but now has to write from Mohammed's one. Kip’s reimaging of Mohammed’s life and affair are heavily influenced by his own personal experiences, and soon enough he struggles to distinguish fact from fiction, reality from fantasy.
The narrative switches from Kip in the basement and the story he is writing. As Kip writes about Mohammed we learn more about him: he lives with his older white partner, an American therapist named Ben, who just recently broke up with him; he had a big fight with Concha, his best-friend months prior and the two have not yet mended things; he is British and struggled a lot to fit in with his American peers at university; he is very much experiencing a major identity crisis. Kip's speculations into philosophy and spirituality, into whiteness and queerness, are characterised by a wry millennial tone, one that was for the most part rather amusing. The sheer absurdity of the scenario and of Kip’s increasingly frenzied inner monologue result in an offbeat narrative, one that is often unapologetically weird and nonsensical.
In the latter part of the novel we follow Kip as he embarks on a physical and possibly mystical journey, one that sees him confronting his relationship with whiteness, literature, and history. Here the story takes even more of a fantastical turn as the line between Kip’s story and Mohammed’s disappears almost completely, and it is very much left to the readers' interpretation to ascertain how unreliable a narrator Kip is.
Sure, at times Kip’s intellectualizing grated on me, as it resulted in some verbose & florid passages that really added little to his story. The satire too sometimes feels too heavy-handed so that the characters and scenarios appear cartoonish, crass even, and in this way, I was reminded of Version Control by Dexter Palmer & My Education by Susan Choi.
The female characters, from the way they were described to the way their personalities were portrayed, left a lot to be desired. And at times it seemed that the story minimises Kip’s sexism because he’s not straight, but that didn't quite sit right with me. One of the worst offenders is Concha, not because she is intentionally unlikeable (the way she fetishes and eroticises Blackness is schifo) but because she is the kind of Mediterranean character that I usually associate with English & American authors. They are passionate & hot-blooded, and often over-sexualised and prone to expressing quaint opinions about life, marriage, love, and sex. Concha is the type of character that I would expect to encounter in a book by Wilkie Collins or Agatha Christie, not in a book published in 2022 and that has a contemporary setting. Of course, when speaking about her Kip has to mention flamenco or emphasize how she goes on about men’s virility and whatnot. She is supposedly in love with Kip, and he knows this and doesn’t exactly do anything about it which leads him to feel guilty about the way he handled their relationship but I for one questioned the validity of their friendship. I just didn’t believe in it. Not because all friendships have to be nice and easy (i quite like the slightly competitive and peculiar bond between selin and svetlana in batuman’s books) but they have to be credible, and because Concha is such a cartoonish character who spouts the kind of ‘opinions’ that reek of scientific racism, I questioned what Kip saw in her. The narrative makes it seem like she’s funny purely because she’s Spanish, and has eccentric Spanish ways/views…le sigh. I was very much over her. She has no redeeming qualities nor is she horribly toxic in a particularly memorable or credible way.
Kip’s partner also was rather one-dimensional, and I didn’t like that the narrative tries to paint him in an ultimately ‘he-is-not-so-bad’ light when again his microaggressions are of the scientific racist variety. Yeah, he’s white so inevitably he will make remarks that reek of his white privilege but the stuff he says are of the there-is-no-going-back variety. And to be honest he doesn’t really have much of a personality, other than being kind of pathetic and ignorant. I just found him rather unpleasant and icky. Once again, I struggled to believe in their relationship, as I did not really get what drew these two men together, nor did the glimpses into their relationship make their romantic and sexual relationship more convincing. As I said, I can find complicated and f*cked up relationships affecting, which is why I love authors like Brandon Taylor and Donna Tartt.
But I could have easily looked past Kip's relationship with these two characters whose presence in the book is after all mostly relegated to flashbacks (i think we hear their disembodied voices while kip is in his self-imposed imprisonment). This story is mainly about Kip and the existential clusterf*ck he experiences. The author presents us with an experimental character study, one that is playfully surrealistic yet surprisingly touching and insightful. The narrative’s intertextuality enriches the text, as Kip often refers to the lives and works of other authors (for example kip refers to W. E. B. Du Bois' double consciousness, Walt Whitman, Toni Morrison, and Fyodor Dostoevsky) as we read of Kip’s experiences in white-dominated places as well as his struggle to ‘acclimatize’ to American culture. As a Black gay man, Kip feels and is made to feel othered, and much of the narrative explores this notion of otherness and there are many awkward instances, of him not fitting in or attempting to connect to others, that brought to mind cringe-comedy shows like Fleabag & Chewing Gum. Sure, I would have liked to learn more about his family and his childhood but by focusing almost exclusively on his adulthood Donaldson still achieves a compelling character analysis.
What I struggled to look past was the story within the story, that is the sections we get from Kip’s book. While I love reading books centred on characters who are aspiring or established authors, for example Writers & Lovers, if said books include sections of writing from these fictional authors...these are of questionable quality. And the chapters from Kip's book...were, how shall I put it, not good. Words like pitiful, bad, and ridiculous come to mind when I think back to them. Atrocious even. The writing was laboured, the storytelling sensationalistic, and the characters, who are supposedly existing in 1919 Egypt, possessed rather modern sensibilities. Sure, you could say this was intentionally pointing to Kip’s over-identifying with his protagonist…yet, having these sections from his book made the parallels between his story and Mohammed’s one seem forced, gimmicky even. Personally, I would have preferred if we’d just gotten a quote from his book at the begging of each chapter or something, but having to read Kip’s book bogged down Kip’s own narrative and made me feel less engaged in what I was reading. I also really didn’t like Kip’s Forster, a generically effete Edwardian man who lacks a moral backbone. Again, was I meant to believe that he was in love with Mohammed? And vice versa? It seemed that Mohammed was mostly revolted by him, and while I can appreciate books that have very toxic relationships or unromantic love stories, here I just didn’t buy into them.
The trajectory of Kip’s journey also risked being a bit too Eat Pray Love with Kip having an ‘awakening’ in Greenland. Sure, he isn't a blonde straight woman, but the way his narrative portrays Aguta, an Inuit woman, yeah...it wasn't great. In Greenland, he comes across someone who shares his very traumatic experiences and the narrative is very flippant about the whole thing, which didn’t sit right with me in that it felt gratuitous and exaggerated.
Quite a few things would have been more effective or amusing if they hadn't been stretched out so long, for instance, I would have enjoyed that chapter on Idris Elba if that information had been given us over the course of a paragraph or two (as opposed to pages). I also failed to get those asides on the body electric (i think it was the body electric).
All in all, I have rather conflicted feelings about Greenland. On the one hand, it was inventive and amusive, on the other, it was sometimes tasteless and it had a lot of cartoonish elements that just struck me as unfunny and self-indulgent. The verbose intellectualism at play here lacked the precise dry humor of Batuman's The Idiot and instead were more inaccessible and trying too hard to be clever & mean, bringing to mind Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi & Cho's My Education (which may very well appeal to some readers, just not me at this point in my life).
Nevertheless, the writing could also be frothy and fun, Kip's shrewd reflections on race, belonging, class, and history made me think of one of my favourite authors, Danzy Senna. Additionally, the narrative made me add An African in Greenland to my tbr-pile.
Considering this is a debut novel, I have to say it is a surprisingly memorable one (sadly i find a lot of debut novels to be a bit too vanilla-ey for my taste) and it has definitely succeeded in making me interested in checking out Donaldson's future work.
February 13, 2022
I didn’t realize how much I needed a novel like this. It’s been a long time since I finished a book that left me feeling better about myself and feeling better about humankind, with a renewed optimism that I, like everyone, have a place and purpose that comes just by being, not necessarily from any role I play in the world. Many themes run through this novel, one of which is the importance of being seen, really and authentically seen, by another and somehow Donaldson managed to leave me, as the reader, with that feeling by the end of the book. I felt seen.
So, wow – what an adventure of a story. Kipling is a Black British ex-pat living in the U.S. and trying to get his novel on E.M. Forster and Mohammed, Forster’s Black Egyptian boyfriend, published. Faced with a publishing deadline 3 weeks hence, he has barricaded himself in the basement of his home in an effort to force himself to re-work his manuscript from the unique perspective of Mohammed rather than Forster. Searching for Mohammed’s voice to tell his story, Kipling undertakes (or undergoes) an unflinching examination of his own life.
That's not quite right. He flinches quite often and that's part of the wonderfully creative tension in the story - Kipling learning to see himself, learning to see others seeing him.
Beginning a story with the main character barricaded in a basement may not seem like a promising adventure but trust me, you will be a well-traveled reader by the novel's end and also a well-read reader. Donaldson weaves in quotes from novelists and poets, largely from the English canon, that serve to teach, guide and steady Kipling on his harrowing emotional, and literal, journey.
Are there elements of magical realism in this novel? I guess that depends on one's perspective on what is real and what is illusory. In Kipling's journey, Donaldson quite brilliantly shows the reality of the amorphous boundaries of space and time.
This will be an excellent book club choice especially, but not exclusively, for groups focused on reading the Black experience and LGBTQ+ experience.
"You become real. When that dimension emerges from within you, it also draws it forth from within the other person. Ultimately, of course, there is no other and you are always meeting yourself. " -Eckhart Tolle
Who would have thought the above quote could be so ably transposed into novel form?
A heartfelt thank you to the author for writing #Greenland and to #NetGalley and #HarperCollins for the electronic ARC.
So, wow – what an adventure of a story. Kipling is a Black British ex-pat living in the U.S. and trying to get his novel on E.M. Forster and Mohammed, Forster’s Black Egyptian boyfriend, published. Faced with a publishing deadline 3 weeks hence, he has barricaded himself in the basement of his home in an effort to force himself to re-work his manuscript from the unique perspective of Mohammed rather than Forster. Searching for Mohammed’s voice to tell his story, Kipling undertakes (or undergoes) an unflinching examination of his own life.
That's not quite right. He flinches quite often and that's part of the wonderfully creative tension in the story - Kipling learning to see himself, learning to see others seeing him.
Beginning a story with the main character barricaded in a basement may not seem like a promising adventure but trust me, you will be a well-traveled reader by the novel's end and also a well-read reader. Donaldson weaves in quotes from novelists and poets, largely from the English canon, that serve to teach, guide and steady Kipling on his harrowing emotional, and literal, journey.
Are there elements of magical realism in this novel? I guess that depends on one's perspective on what is real and what is illusory. In Kipling's journey, Donaldson quite brilliantly shows the reality of the amorphous boundaries of space and time.
This will be an excellent book club choice especially, but not exclusively, for groups focused on reading the Black experience and LGBTQ+ experience.
"You become real. When that dimension emerges from within you, it also draws it forth from within the other person. Ultimately, of course, there is no other and you are always meeting yourself. " -Eckhart Tolle
Who would have thought the above quote could be so ably transposed into novel form?
A heartfelt thank you to the author for writing #Greenland and to #NetGalley and #HarperCollins for the electronic ARC.
December 2, 2022
Rating: 4.25* of five, rounded down for stylistic infelicities
SHORTLISTED for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction! The Medalists will be announced 29 January 2023.
I RECEIVED THIS DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I don't think anyone on Earth could've wanted to love this book more than I did. I'm in an intergenerational Black/white gay relationship. I am the very epitome of this debut novel's audience!
And here's the four-plus-star review to tell you why; and where it fell short for me.
Start with the pace. Kip(ling, as in the white Empire apologist) is Black, his lover...a strange hybrid of presence and absence...is white. Kip's main focus in the novel he needs to write in three weeks to meet his deadline is E.M. Forster's Black Egyptian lover, Mohammed's, treacherous path to being with an older white man. That needs set-up...but almost the first quarter of the book? It was drawn-out and in view of the excitement potential of this tale of discovery and personal growth through identification with Otherness, sapped the energy out of the tale for this reader.
Next, the sexuality...I am a lifelong admirer of and votary to the phallus, but good gravy, the erections and the spontaneous orgasms in here are, um, over the top. You should forgive. I'm also, as a survivor of maternal incest, permaybehaps a bit oversensitive to the juxtaposition of sexuality and those who really should be too young for such to occur to them. I accept, though, that this isn't done by the author for a lascivious purpose but as a fact of a certain kind of life. Still squicked me out.
But the core, the beating heart of the book, is the quest to be one's own power, to set one's own course, when Black and Other. Ben (Kip's lover) wants badly to be supportive, yet can't help but be a force for assimilation. No one white can help that. It's a fact of racist society...that we exist in our privilege is enough for us to exert metaphysical gravity towards that end. The fact that Mohammed is in love with a man of great public eminence means he's under even greater assimilationist pressures. And let's face it, the assimilation can never be complete or seamless. One's skin color is not subject to change.
Kip's literary efforts are to deliver an acceptable manuscript. To a publisher, white. Who might, or might not, care to read, sign, publish his work...he has to do this. And he's got his companion, Mohammed, in his semblance of ever-increasing corporeality, as a guide, a distraction, a hectoring nuisance of a muse. Upstairs, he's got his loving, exasperated, uncomprehending white lover Ben.
This is the way we're going to go...through the hard, scary, fiercely fought battlefields of love and relationship and the deep dependence we all have on the illusion of the world we carry in our heads. Ben's illusions about marriage to the creative and exciting Kip didn't include the hard, slogging reality of living with a writer's frequent descents into insanity. Kip's fantasy of the way white privilege works was that it was transitive, like so many other senses of the verb "to fuck". One of them, dear Kip, is "to fuck over" and that is what Kip's fears and senses are telling him is happening. His embodied Blackness in Mohammed, the muse and weirdly corporeal fantasy, is there to tell him how getting fucked is only fun if it's not "over," and that's what the white men they truly love are inevitably going to do.
Well, there's something in that...there's no relationship that has perfect parity of partners, and there's a lot fewer relationships that have both Black and white men in them that get too close to that fantasy of parity. It's a tough enough thing to get the whole world's ideas about men in love with each other..."who's the woman? is what they say about Black men true?"...out of your bed, then you've got to get it out of your head. That's where things just crash for most people I've known who are in these relationships. Ben and Kip are separated by the powerful pull of ease.
Ben's crash comes while Kip's at his most vulnerable, and his most destructive. Ben looks into the void of Kip's unfillable maw of need, validation and identity and control and power and acceptance and love, and realizes "I can't do that...I can't be that." This being the nature of intimate relationships, Kip simply stalls out when he is Seen and abandoned on the existential level by the man he wanted to save him. Mohammed, the fantasy of Blackness and betrayed Otherness, and Kip have to make a run for it, or else be consumed into invisibiliy.
These struggles are, I suppose it pays to say out loud here, basic human ones. They're not different for different people, no matter their manifold other oppositions. What they represent is the endless, victoryless battle to be better at being yourself in a world that does not care in the tiniest degree about you. And what Kip must do is see that battle through. What makes his battle relatable, we've established in its basics. What makes it unique is Kip's thriving, driving need to create. And Ben? He isn't there in that battle. So Kip's on the field by himself. With Mohammed's fantastical, corporeal shade. That betrayed and abandoned, bitterly wounded, foully abused Black body is what Kip's life needs to incorporate because it is the very center of his Jungian Selfness.
The final scenes of Greenland, taking place with Black men in cold, searing whiteness, are some of the most profound explications of the Union of the Self I've ever read. And, faithful to Chekhov's gun rule, the ending of the novel is the end. The true end.
Remember, though, that all endings are also beginnings.
SHORTLISTED for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction! The Medalists will be announced 29 January 2023.
I RECEIVED THIS DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I don't think anyone on Earth could've wanted to love this book more than I did. I'm in an intergenerational Black/white gay relationship. I am the very epitome of this debut novel's audience!
And here's the four-plus-star review to tell you why; and where it fell short for me.
Start with the pace. Kip(ling, as in the white Empire apologist) is Black, his lover...a strange hybrid of presence and absence...is white. Kip's main focus in the novel he needs to write in three weeks to meet his deadline is E.M. Forster's Black Egyptian lover, Mohammed's, treacherous path to being with an older white man. That needs set-up...but almost the first quarter of the book? It was drawn-out and in view of the excitement potential of this tale of discovery and personal growth through identification with Otherness, sapped the energy out of the tale for this reader.
Next, the sexuality...I am a lifelong admirer of and votary to the phallus, but good gravy, the erections and the spontaneous orgasms in here are, um, over the top. You should forgive. I'm also, as a survivor of maternal incest, permaybehaps a bit oversensitive to the juxtaposition of sexuality and those who really should be too young for such to occur to them. I accept, though, that this isn't done by the author for a lascivious purpose but as a fact of a certain kind of life. Still squicked me out.
But the core, the beating heart of the book, is the quest to be one's own power, to set one's own course, when Black and Other. Ben (Kip's lover) wants badly to be supportive, yet can't help but be a force for assimilation. No one white can help that. It's a fact of racist society...that we exist in our privilege is enough for us to exert metaphysical gravity towards that end. The fact that Mohammed is in love with a man of great public eminence means he's under even greater assimilationist pressures. And let's face it, the assimilation can never be complete or seamless. One's skin color is not subject to change.
Kip's literary efforts are to deliver an acceptable manuscript. To a publisher, white. Who might, or might not, care to read, sign, publish his work...he has to do this. And he's got his companion, Mohammed, in his semblance of ever-increasing corporeality, as a guide, a distraction, a hectoring nuisance of a muse. Upstairs, he's got his loving, exasperated, uncomprehending white lover Ben.
This is the way we're going to go...through the hard, scary, fiercely fought battlefields of love and relationship and the deep dependence we all have on the illusion of the world we carry in our heads. Ben's illusions about marriage to the creative and exciting Kip didn't include the hard, slogging reality of living with a writer's frequent descents into insanity. Kip's fantasy of the way white privilege works was that it was transitive, like so many other senses of the verb "to fuck". One of them, dear Kip, is "to fuck over" and that is what Kip's fears and senses are telling him is happening. His embodied Blackness in Mohammed, the muse and weirdly corporeal fantasy, is there to tell him how getting fucked is only fun if it's not "over," and that's what the white men they truly love are inevitably going to do.
Well, there's something in that...there's no relationship that has perfect parity of partners, and there's a lot fewer relationships that have both Black and white men in them that get too close to that fantasy of parity. It's a tough enough thing to get the whole world's ideas about men in love with each other..."who's the woman? is what they say about Black men true?"...out of your bed, then you've got to get it out of your head. That's where things just crash for most people I've known who are in these relationships. Ben and Kip are separated by the powerful pull of ease.
Ben's crash comes while Kip's at his most vulnerable, and his most destructive. Ben looks into the void of Kip's unfillable maw of need, validation and identity and control and power and acceptance and love, and realizes "I can't do that...I can't be that." This being the nature of intimate relationships, Kip simply stalls out when he is Seen and abandoned on the existential level by the man he wanted to save him. Mohammed, the fantasy of Blackness and betrayed Otherness, and Kip have to make a run for it, or else be consumed into invisibiliy.
These struggles are, I suppose it pays to say out loud here, basic human ones. They're not different for different people, no matter their manifold other oppositions. What they represent is the endless, victoryless battle to be better at being yourself in a world that does not care in the tiniest degree about you. And what Kip must do is see that battle through. What makes his battle relatable, we've established in its basics. What makes it unique is Kip's thriving, driving need to create. And Ben? He isn't there in that battle. So Kip's on the field by himself. With Mohammed's fantastical, corporeal shade. That betrayed and abandoned, bitterly wounded, foully abused Black body is what Kip's life needs to incorporate because it is the very center of his Jungian Selfness.
The final scenes of Greenland, taking place with Black men in cold, searing whiteness, are some of the most profound explications of the Union of the Self I've ever read. And, faithful to Chekhov's gun rule, the ending of the novel is the end. The true end.
Remember, though, that all endings are also beginnings.
September 12, 2022
Could we all be living in our own fictions?
A complicated reaction to a complex book.
First of all, I had to adjust my expectations. I was expecting an exploration of the tram conductor, Mohammed, who lived in Alexandria and had a wartime relationship with E.M. Forster. This relationship is well-known to those who have read a Forster biography (such as A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster; acknowledged as a source in this novel). However, Mohammed as a person plays a very minor role in this narrative; the story is really about a writer searching for his material — in essence, searching for himself. Mohammed is always seen as a reflection of "Kip" (the writer), or as his projection. This, perhaps, was the point, a statement that all creators are merely describing themselves. This narrative does not pretend otherwise. Projecting our desires onto another is both intimate and othering, and these sort of nuances is what makes this novel complicated.
Next, I had to accept that the format of the novel veered between realistic scenarios and what might be described as a fever dream or magic realism. There are over-the-top segments, preposterous events, crazily dramatic emotional scenes — which to me felt more like what might happen in a dream than in real life. Two small examples: planning to live in a basement on crackers for 3 weeks; and flying out of JFK for 4 hours and only reaching Nova Scotia.
However, there were also compelling sections which were very moving, such as "Ben" talking about being young in the 1980s and everyone expecting to die (this part reminded me of Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives.
The oscillation of the text between fantasy and reality did displace some of my involvement with the story. (How did Kip get out of the basement? He "doesn't remember").
Novels about writers writing are among my least favourite things — so there's that. At least this one managed to overcome my aversion and hold my interest. As a fever dream it is still percolating, and somehow I suspect that I might never fully recover.
A complicated reaction to a complex book.
First of all, I had to adjust my expectations. I was expecting an exploration of the tram conductor, Mohammed, who lived in Alexandria and had a wartime relationship with E.M. Forster. This relationship is well-known to those who have read a Forster biography (such as A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster; acknowledged as a source in this novel). However, Mohammed as a person plays a very minor role in this narrative; the story is really about a writer searching for his material — in essence, searching for himself. Mohammed is always seen as a reflection of "Kip" (the writer), or as his projection. This, perhaps, was the point, a statement that all creators are merely describing themselves. This narrative does not pretend otherwise. Projecting our desires onto another is both intimate and othering, and these sort of nuances is what makes this novel complicated.
Next, I had to accept that the format of the novel veered between realistic scenarios and what might be described as a fever dream or magic realism. There are over-the-top segments, preposterous events, crazily dramatic emotional scenes — which to me felt more like what might happen in a dream than in real life. Two small examples: planning to live in a basement on crackers for 3 weeks; and flying out of JFK for 4 hours and only reaching Nova Scotia.
However, there were also compelling sections which were very moving, such as "Ben" talking about being young in the 1980s and everyone expecting to die (this part reminded me of Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives.
The oscillation of the text between fantasy and reality did displace some of my involvement with the story. (How did Kip get out of the basement? He "doesn't remember").
Novels about writers writing are among my least favourite things — so there's that. At least this one managed to overcome my aversion and hold my interest. As a fever dream it is still percolating, and somehow I suspect that I might never fully recover.
June 28, 2022
Greenland is David Santos Donaldson's tale of queerness, Blackness, whiteness, their loves, and their gulfs.
Kipling (literally) seals himself away in the basement of his Brooklyn apartment and, in the wake of a divorce, the end of a friendship, and numerous publishing rejections, sets off to rewrite his story of Mohammed, E.M. Forster's little known Black, Egpytian lover. Kip, himself a Black man from the "colonies" who grew up in London to parents trying with every fiber to blend with their white upper middle class compatriots, realizes he has more in common with Mohammed than he ever thought. What transpires is nothing less than a saga, as Kip realizes and reflects on his Blackness, sense of un-belonging, his encounters with whiteness in his romantic relationships, and the franticness with which he wants to escape it all.
Greenland unfolds in short bursts of flashbacks, present stories, and a story within the story - a structure that is at first jarring but becomes such an incredible part of the book as you find yourself engrossed in three stories instead of just one. Santos Donaldson writes in a way that is compelling and places you right in the mind of Kipling so that you see through his eyes as he wrestles with his racial and sexual identity and the story will leave an impact on so many readers. Greenland is hands-down the best book I've read this year; I hope it comes to mean as much to you as it does to me.
Kipling (literally) seals himself away in the basement of his Brooklyn apartment and, in the wake of a divorce, the end of a friendship, and numerous publishing rejections, sets off to rewrite his story of Mohammed, E.M. Forster's little known Black, Egpytian lover. Kip, himself a Black man from the "colonies" who grew up in London to parents trying with every fiber to blend with their white upper middle class compatriots, realizes he has more in common with Mohammed than he ever thought. What transpires is nothing less than a saga, as Kip realizes and reflects on his Blackness, sense of un-belonging, his encounters with whiteness in his romantic relationships, and the franticness with which he wants to escape it all.
Greenland unfolds in short bursts of flashbacks, present stories, and a story within the story - a structure that is at first jarring but becomes such an incredible part of the book as you find yourself engrossed in three stories instead of just one. Santos Donaldson writes in a way that is compelling and places you right in the mind of Kipling so that you see through his eyes as he wrestles with his racial and sexual identity and the story will leave an impact on so many readers. Greenland is hands-down the best book I've read this year; I hope it comes to mean as much to you as it does to me.
March 19, 2023
Greenland could be one of the ultimate bibles of the black queer experience, one of the most memorable books I've ever read. The story is funny, hilarious, outrageous, the writing is razor sharp and reminds me of Zadie Smith's White Teeth. This dreamlike novel is not at all what I expected, but exactly what I needed.
September 6, 2022
Pffft… ! I’m so confused as to what I feel about this book!
Some sections of it are SO GOOD! Like, really amazing! With a beautifully complex and complicated main protagonist.
But… there is just too much going on. I feel like Donaldson included every single idea he’s ever had! A book within a book… yep, totally get that. But there are so many ideas in here, that it almost should’ve been four separate books.
Also, how many other books, poems, plays are referenced?! I did start to wondered if Donaldson’s editor ended up saying, “you know what, just reference where all these influences are from, otherwise you’re gonna get sued!”
So… kinda loved it, kinda completely baffled as to what I think of it!
Some sections of it are SO GOOD! Like, really amazing! With a beautifully complex and complicated main protagonist.
But… there is just too much going on. I feel like Donaldson included every single idea he’s ever had! A book within a book… yep, totally get that. But there are so many ideas in here, that it almost should’ve been four separate books.
Also, how many other books, poems, plays are referenced?! I did start to wondered if Donaldson’s editor ended up saying, “you know what, just reference where all these influences are from, otherwise you’re gonna get sued!”
So… kinda loved it, kinda completely baffled as to what I think of it!
July 12, 2022
Greenland is a gorgeously multi-faceted, meta-literary, quasi-ghost story meets romantic vision-quest that will knock your reading socks off and knit them back together into a whole new design. Donaldson's stellar debut brings to mind Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad), Sarah Perry (The Essex Serpent), Paul Beatty (The Sellout), and Viet Nguyen (The Sympathizer.)
March 28, 2023
To read Greenland, readers must be prepared to hopscotch between reality and unreality, belief and disbelief. For every aspect of David Santos Donaldson's debut novel that I can recommend there's another aspect I can disavow. Much like Kip, the narrator of this seesaw novel, I alternate between liking the book and disliking it, understanding what Donaldson is trying accomplish and failing to comprehend his intentions.
I'll try not to spoil this novel too much, but the dust jacket is accurate. Kip is a struggling writer caught in the middle of an existential crisis. His husband wants a divorce, no one wants to publish his novel, he's just had a breakup with his best friend, and he's a Black gay man totally warped by the rampant racism and homophobia of Western culture. As a writer and a Black gay man myself, I feel Greenland is a novel written expressly for me. I'm the target audience here; that feels good. I found myself nodding along with Kip and some of the circumstances he found himself in, especially during his years in the MFA program at Columbia. Trust me, if you ever doubt the insidiousness of racism, just try being a Black writer in a predominately White writers workshop. You'd be reaching for Frantz Fanon too. Donaldson was dead-on in his recounting of Kip's experiences here. In fact, despite the absurdity of Kip barricading himself in a basement with nothing but saltine crackers, a laptop, and a gun, in a mad-dash effort to write a whole new novel from Mohammad El Adl's perspective about his doomed affair with E. M. Forster, the first hundred pages of Greenland are gold. Though I find Kip's insistence on finding racism everywhere, in all interactions with all people, White, Black, or otherwise, to be overblown, I can relate to his struggles. But this is only the beginning of Greenland's problems.
I think Greenland is a case of a writer--like his main character--desperate to get a book published, but with an editor and other readers who just didn't have the heart to say no to him. No is a powerful word. Sometimes it's the worst thing a writer can hear, but at other times it's better than hearing the song of the Muse. Folks, someone should have said no to some of Donaldson's choices. This book would have been excellent if he had confined it to Kip's struggles to get his new book written. In that way, he could have crafted a deft parallel between his fractured relationship with his husband Ben and Mohammad's equally painful relationship with Forster. Donaldson could have made Greenland a cogent and insightful examination of the many complexities of interracial love between gay men. Although the book tries to give readers this, it takes whacky twists and turns into the surreal and the absurd, losing focus and credibility with each page. There was no need for the inclusion of ancient deities, and I still have a hard time swallowing the final act of the novel which radially upends the book's first half. Believe me, you'll be asking yourself WTF? too.
And that's the entire problem with Greenland. The author is asking readers to buy into situations that ring not only false but downright clownish, pushing conceits and surrealism beyond the scope of what readers can accept. Kip doesn't present himself as a true writer, or a Black man trying his best to resist the slings and arrows of widespread racism, or a gay man proud to live an authentic life. Instead, Kip is a pathetic psycho, a victim of the culture's racism and homophobia rather than the hero Donaldson strives to make him. He doesn't even succeed as a writer, really, because his goal isn't to write a book that reflects his true artistic vision. He's just a dude trying to get a book published so he can exact revenge on the people, Black and White alike, who did him dirty at Columbia. Why did Donaldson do this to Kip and, by extension, to us?
For all of Greenland's faults, there are major strengths, and David Santos Donaldson is a writer we need more books from. He's like a kid having fun with a new toy. As a first effort, this novel isn't bad and it isn't good. It's a shiny gizmo that offers a fair amount of amusement but after a while you'll want to toss it into the toy box and move on to grown folks' business.
I'll try not to spoil this novel too much, but the dust jacket is accurate. Kip is a struggling writer caught in the middle of an existential crisis. His husband wants a divorce, no one wants to publish his novel, he's just had a breakup with his best friend, and he's a Black gay man totally warped by the rampant racism and homophobia of Western culture. As a writer and a Black gay man myself, I feel Greenland is a novel written expressly for me. I'm the target audience here; that feels good. I found myself nodding along with Kip and some of the circumstances he found himself in, especially during his years in the MFA program at Columbia. Trust me, if you ever doubt the insidiousness of racism, just try being a Black writer in a predominately White writers workshop. You'd be reaching for Frantz Fanon too. Donaldson was dead-on in his recounting of Kip's experiences here. In fact, despite the absurdity of Kip barricading himself in a basement with nothing but saltine crackers, a laptop, and a gun, in a mad-dash effort to write a whole new novel from Mohammad El Adl's perspective about his doomed affair with E. M. Forster, the first hundred pages of Greenland are gold. Though I find Kip's insistence on finding racism everywhere, in all interactions with all people, White, Black, or otherwise, to be overblown, I can relate to his struggles. But this is only the beginning of Greenland's problems.
I think Greenland is a case of a writer--like his main character--desperate to get a book published, but with an editor and other readers who just didn't have the heart to say no to him. No is a powerful word. Sometimes it's the worst thing a writer can hear, but at other times it's better than hearing the song of the Muse. Folks, someone should have said no to some of Donaldson's choices. This book would have been excellent if he had confined it to Kip's struggles to get his new book written. In that way, he could have crafted a deft parallel between his fractured relationship with his husband Ben and Mohammad's equally painful relationship with Forster. Donaldson could have made Greenland a cogent and insightful examination of the many complexities of interracial love between gay men. Although the book tries to give readers this, it takes whacky twists and turns into the surreal and the absurd, losing focus and credibility with each page. There was no need for the inclusion of ancient deities, and I still have a hard time swallowing the final act of the novel which radially upends the book's first half. Believe me, you'll be asking yourself WTF? too.
And that's the entire problem with Greenland. The author is asking readers to buy into situations that ring not only false but downright clownish, pushing conceits and surrealism beyond the scope of what readers can accept. Kip doesn't present himself as a true writer, or a Black man trying his best to resist the slings and arrows of widespread racism, or a gay man proud to live an authentic life. Instead, Kip is a pathetic psycho, a victim of the culture's racism and homophobia rather than the hero Donaldson strives to make him. He doesn't even succeed as a writer, really, because his goal isn't to write a book that reflects his true artistic vision. He's just a dude trying to get a book published so he can exact revenge on the people, Black and White alike, who did him dirty at Columbia. Why did Donaldson do this to Kip and, by extension, to us?
For all of Greenland's faults, there are major strengths, and David Santos Donaldson is a writer we need more books from. He's like a kid having fun with a new toy. As a first effort, this novel isn't bad and it isn't good. It's a shiny gizmo that offers a fair amount of amusement but after a while you'll want to toss it into the toy box and move on to grown folks' business.
June 2, 2022
I have just finished reading “Greenland” by David Santos Donaldson, and there is so much unpacking to be done – not only where the book is concerned but also when it comes to my life. As a brown gay man, facing a terrible mid-life crisis, and trying to adjust to the world that’s rapidly changing around him, I couldn’t identify more with Kip, the gay black narrator of the novel.
Kip Starling has decided to rewrite his novel in three weeks by locking himself in the basement. His novel takes him in the mind of Mohammed el Adl, E.M. Forster’s secret lover, who was also a Black queer man like Kip. This is where it all begins for Kip, or rather unravels. His need to be seen and heard, and then the juxtaposition of his life to that of Mohammed’s – both the other, both trying hard to fit in, both with great education and yet feels not accounting for much, each with white lovers, almost not knowing what to do with them. Each with a burden of their own.
While reading this novel, there were so many times I thought I was reading my life, or at least portions of it. It is funny how art and life get mixed-up sometimes, that you cannot differentiate one from the other.
As Kip navigates to find himself in the process of writing the book, I was doing the same with some parts of my life that felt strangely familiar and ones I could relate to from the book. That’s the power of good storytelling – of how it makes you subconsciously see within.
Kip’s struggles are evident – the way not the world sees him as a queer Black man but the way he sees himself in relation to that. Donaldson takes us to the core of the book with Kip’s psyche – the fact that he was named after Kipling – a writer who has been labelled a colonialist, a jingoist, and a racist, speaks volumes about how Kip would turn out to be. The struggle to understand if he is black enough and how much black – when he starts dating white men, to trying to fit in with the “black community” at college, or even when simply trying to overcome his insecurities, he doubts, he second-guesses, he doesn’t have the confidence to perhaps be black.
Kip’s life then became mine – the struggle to fit in, to write my book, to understand where I come from, and be accepting of it, but more than anything else to embrace love when it is in my way. More than anything else, as a reader I was immensely drawn to the novel within the novel - when Kip's and Mohammed's voices became the same, when they were clearly different, when they both sought refuge in each other, and when they both tried to hide. Donaldson brings out all these elements with an honesty that shocks, surprises, and ultimately makes you surrender to the text.
Greenland is a book about love, about coming to terms with yourself repeatedly, about knowing when to give up and when to get back up and start all over. It is a book that is tender, full of angst (or at least that’s what I thought as a typical gay man – and proud of it), and about what it takes to be in interracial relationships.
David’s writing is refreshing – at no point did I feel that I was reading something already written, though I am sure there are several books that speak of the LGBTQIA theme, linking it to a novel within a novel, but it shows that David has a fondness for E.M. Forster and that translates sublimely into this text.
The redemptive power of literature is constant – almost in every chapter, as a subtext, moving slowly, seen at times, but reminding the reader that literature can save us and does.
Greenland is a fantastic debut – one that isn’t shy of exploring difficult and complex emotions. It is a grand debut in the sense that it takes it risks and leaves the reader with awe, joy, melancholy, and ultimately with the knowledge that relationships are not easy and take a lot from you.
Kip Starling has decided to rewrite his novel in three weeks by locking himself in the basement. His novel takes him in the mind of Mohammed el Adl, E.M. Forster’s secret lover, who was also a Black queer man like Kip. This is where it all begins for Kip, or rather unravels. His need to be seen and heard, and then the juxtaposition of his life to that of Mohammed’s – both the other, both trying hard to fit in, both with great education and yet feels not accounting for much, each with white lovers, almost not knowing what to do with them. Each with a burden of their own.
While reading this novel, there were so many times I thought I was reading my life, or at least portions of it. It is funny how art and life get mixed-up sometimes, that you cannot differentiate one from the other.
As Kip navigates to find himself in the process of writing the book, I was doing the same with some parts of my life that felt strangely familiar and ones I could relate to from the book. That’s the power of good storytelling – of how it makes you subconsciously see within.
Kip’s struggles are evident – the way not the world sees him as a queer Black man but the way he sees himself in relation to that. Donaldson takes us to the core of the book with Kip’s psyche – the fact that he was named after Kipling – a writer who has been labelled a colonialist, a jingoist, and a racist, speaks volumes about how Kip would turn out to be. The struggle to understand if he is black enough and how much black – when he starts dating white men, to trying to fit in with the “black community” at college, or even when simply trying to overcome his insecurities, he doubts, he second-guesses, he doesn’t have the confidence to perhaps be black.
Kip’s life then became mine – the struggle to fit in, to write my book, to understand where I come from, and be accepting of it, but more than anything else to embrace love when it is in my way. More than anything else, as a reader I was immensely drawn to the novel within the novel - when Kip's and Mohammed's voices became the same, when they were clearly different, when they both sought refuge in each other, and when they both tried to hide. Donaldson brings out all these elements with an honesty that shocks, surprises, and ultimately makes you surrender to the text.
Greenland is a book about love, about coming to terms with yourself repeatedly, about knowing when to give up and when to get back up and start all over. It is a book that is tender, full of angst (or at least that’s what I thought as a typical gay man – and proud of it), and about what it takes to be in interracial relationships.
David’s writing is refreshing – at no point did I feel that I was reading something already written, though I am sure there are several books that speak of the LGBTQIA theme, linking it to a novel within a novel, but it shows that David has a fondness for E.M. Forster and that translates sublimely into this text.
The redemptive power of literature is constant – almost in every chapter, as a subtext, moving slowly, seen at times, but reminding the reader that literature can save us and does.
Greenland is a fantastic debut – one that isn’t shy of exploring difficult and complex emotions. It is a grand debut in the sense that it takes it risks and leaves the reader with awe, joy, melancholy, and ultimately with the knowledge that relationships are not easy and take a lot from you.
June 15, 2022
In Greenland, David Santos Donaldson offers us a central character, Kip (short for Kipling) Starling, whose sudden swings in moods and thinking reflect his experience living as a gay black writer in the U.S. in a longterm relationship with a white man, racing against a three-week deadline to rewrite a novelization of E.M. Forster's love affair Mohammed el Adl, a black man living in Egypt during the struggle for Egyptian independence, so that the novel is presented from el Adl's perspective rather than Forster's. And there's the part about locking himself in a basement and boarding up the door so he can't do anything but write, and the part about what turns out to be a journey to Greenland, though that isn't the destination he was originally headed toward. Also, what may or may not be hallucinations.
To say that Greenland is not a tidy novel would be an immense understatement. But that's the point. Kip is struggling to live fully as himself in a society determined not to see him clearly and only minimally interested in what he has to say as a writer. Not tidy. Chaos.
This makes for a novel that is demanding of its readers. As you'll see if you peruse the reviews for Greenland, some show readers embracing Greenland's chaos, appreciating its complicated truths and contradictions, and some show other readers walking away from the novel and the demands it makes upon them. I'm not trying to depict a dichotomy here between "good" readers who get the novel and "bad" readers who don't. I'm just saying that either you'll find the payoff from reading Greenland sufficient or you won't.
At times, I did experience reading Greenland as work—but I also experienced it as revelatory with a breadth of vision that challenged me to see Kip's world in totality, rather than just letting me take a stroll down one of the many trajectories he travels simultaneously. If you share my literary inclinations, you'll be carrying this novel along inside yourself for a long time to come, turning bits and pieces over in your mind and exploring all the different ways they can be put together.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
To say that Greenland is not a tidy novel would be an immense understatement. But that's the point. Kip is struggling to live fully as himself in a society determined not to see him clearly and only minimally interested in what he has to say as a writer. Not tidy. Chaos.
This makes for a novel that is demanding of its readers. As you'll see if you peruse the reviews for Greenland, some show readers embracing Greenland's chaos, appreciating its complicated truths and contradictions, and some show other readers walking away from the novel and the demands it makes upon them. I'm not trying to depict a dichotomy here between "good" readers who get the novel and "bad" readers who don't. I'm just saying that either you'll find the payoff from reading Greenland sufficient or you won't.
At times, I did experience reading Greenland as work—but I also experienced it as revelatory with a breadth of vision that challenged me to see Kip's world in totality, rather than just letting me take a stroll down one of the many trajectories he travels simultaneously. If you share my literary inclinations, you'll be carrying this novel along inside yourself for a long time to come, turning bits and pieces over in your mind and exploring all the different ways they can be put together.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.
June 29, 2022
Narration: 5 Stars
Story: 5 Stars
David Santos Donaldson's debut Greenland was like a fever dream, one in which the past, present & future collided to tell a wholly original & unique story unlike anything I've ever experienced before.
I had to sit with this one for quite a while, it's a particularly difficult book to review - there's a ton going on here, a mix between contemporary & literary fiction, historical fiction, & a ghost story, but at no point did it ever feel like too much, I was completely engrossed right from the start & captivated through the very end. It was fascinating being in Kip's mind as he struggled with what it means to be Black & queer, to be in a relationship with a white man at a time when racial tension throughout the U.S. is at an all-time high, to be fully seen as a human being, one worthy of having his story told in an industry that prioritizes whiteness over marginalized voices. & to see how Donaldson so seamlessly weaved Mohammed's story into the mix, how the life of a queer Black man in the 1910's isn't that different from the life of a modern queer Black man, was eye-opening. & I've got to give it up for the narrator, he did such a fantastic job & really sold the raw emotion behind so many of Donaldson's words. It's been a while since I've felt so impacted by a piece of fiction & I can't believe this was a debut, I think this is such an important, timely story that more readers need in their hands - this would make the perfect book club book. I'll be thinking about this book for a very long time. Highly, highly recommend, easily one of my top reads of the year!
I tabbed so many quotes for myself, but I wanted to end this with one that really stood out to me, one that I feel like perfectly captures an argument at the heart of the novel:
'Gay’ is when you have the power to choose your identity. The luxury. We are Black, we cannot be gay! [Y]ou talk about freedom to choose your identity, no? But I am no fool, Kipling. I see the Black man has no freedom in America or the UK. How can you say you are gay when you have no freedom? Whites can be happy & gay - but not us. They all use god to control us, to deny our humanity!
Story: 5 Stars
David Santos Donaldson's debut Greenland was like a fever dream, one in which the past, present & future collided to tell a wholly original & unique story unlike anything I've ever experienced before.
I had to sit with this one for quite a while, it's a particularly difficult book to review - there's a ton going on here, a mix between contemporary & literary fiction, historical fiction, & a ghost story, but at no point did it ever feel like too much, I was completely engrossed right from the start & captivated through the very end. It was fascinating being in Kip's mind as he struggled with what it means to be Black & queer, to be in a relationship with a white man at a time when racial tension throughout the U.S. is at an all-time high, to be fully seen as a human being, one worthy of having his story told in an industry that prioritizes whiteness over marginalized voices. & to see how Donaldson so seamlessly weaved Mohammed's story into the mix, how the life of a queer Black man in the 1910's isn't that different from the life of a modern queer Black man, was eye-opening. & I've got to give it up for the narrator, he did such a fantastic job & really sold the raw emotion behind so many of Donaldson's words. It's been a while since I've felt so impacted by a piece of fiction & I can't believe this was a debut, I think this is such an important, timely story that more readers need in their hands - this would make the perfect book club book. I'll be thinking about this book for a very long time. Highly, highly recommend, easily one of my top reads of the year!
I tabbed so many quotes for myself, but I wanted to end this with one that really stood out to me, one that I feel like perfectly captures an argument at the heart of the novel:
'Gay’ is when you have the power to choose your identity. The luxury. We are Black, we cannot be gay! [Y]ou talk about freedom to choose your identity, no? But I am no fool, Kipling. I see the Black man has no freedom in America or the UK. How can you say you are gay when you have no freedom? Whites can be happy & gay - but not us. They all use god to control us, to deny our humanity!
November 27, 2022
various impressions:
This debut novel reflects an assured, thoughtful, and imaginative author.
Wow.... a very smartly and intricately plotted book. The design of the story elements drove the pacing and enabled lots of reveals. yes, the novel within a novel is clever but more importantly it serves this story.
careful mention of many IRL queer and Black figures, authors and historical persons. It was intriguing to see the connections and similarities and they're integrating into one, overarching framework. (there are several references to literary titles by the above authors. Leaves of Grass will always remind me of Monica and Bill)
There's social analysis and critique that addresses race, sexuality, colonialism, and more. and it's progressive and not presented on a soap box. instead, it's nuanced and confident, and fits perfectly in the story.
The characters are multi-faceted, and their actions and perspectives here are informed and coherent. sure does help to have an author who is a licensed psychotherapist.
psychological and/or literary analysis: Kip encounters and undertakes a reckoning with different aspects of himself or struggles--each embodied by the other characters. One of the most iconic takes place in the scene on Pages 309-310 (Hardcopy).
clear explanation of complex issues, eg time & space, anesthesia
Beautiful language that is affecting and emotionally evocative. Calling someone, "My Possibility." Asking him, "Come to me." The writing conjures emotional and psychological responses simultaneously; it's romantic and/or sensual.
the most moving and profound scene occurs on page 309-310 (hardcopy). (I can't describe it more without spoiling any aspect but it's just powerful.)
I will definitely read more titles from this author
This debut novel reflects an assured, thoughtful, and imaginative author.
Wow.... a very smartly and intricately plotted book. The design of the story elements drove the pacing and enabled lots of reveals. yes, the novel within a novel is clever but more importantly it serves this story.
careful mention of many IRL queer and Black figures, authors and historical persons. It was intriguing to see the connections and similarities and they're integrating into one, overarching framework. (there are several references to literary titles by the above authors. Leaves of Grass will always remind me of Monica and Bill)
There's social analysis and critique that addresses race, sexuality, colonialism, and more. and it's progressive and not presented on a soap box. instead, it's nuanced and confident, and fits perfectly in the story.
The characters are multi-faceted, and their actions and perspectives here are informed and coherent. sure does help to have an author who is a licensed psychotherapist.
psychological and/or literary analysis: Kip encounters and undertakes a reckoning with different aspects of himself or struggles--each embodied by the other characters. One of the most iconic takes place in the scene on Pages 309-310 (Hardcopy).
clear explanation of complex issues, eg time & space, anesthesia
Beautiful language that is affecting and emotionally evocative. Calling someone, "My Possibility." Asking him, "Come to me." The writing conjures emotional and psychological responses simultaneously; it's romantic and/or sensual.
the most moving and profound scene occurs on page 309-310 (hardcopy). (I can't describe it more without spoiling any aspect but it's just powerful.)
I will definitely read more titles from this author
November 12, 2022
Greenland
is creative, mesmerizing, and beautifully written.
Kip has dreamed of being a published author his entire life. His parents even named him Kipling (after the author), so how could that not be his destiny? But while his first manuscript had promise, it’s not ready to be published.
When an editor gives him the idea to shift the focus of his novel to tell the story of Mohammed El Adl, the Black Egyptian tram conductor who had an affair with famed British author E.M. Forster, Kip pounces on the idea, being Black and queer himself. But of course, there’s a catch: the editor is retiring in three weeks and the publishing house has been sold, so if he doesn’t finish in time, there’s no deal.
No matter. Kip has boarded himself in a basement study with “five boxes of Premium Saltine Crackers, three tins of Café Bustelo, and twenty-one one-gallon jugs of Poland Spring Water.” And a hammer. And a gun. And he won’t leave until he’s done, much to the worry of his ex-husband and his ex-best friend.
What ensues is a novel within a novel. We get Mohammed’s story, told while he was in prison, but we also get Kip’s story, and they intersect in many different ways. And as Kip’s mania drives him to finish this book, in essence, Mohammed is telling his story to Kip. It’s fascinating, a little confusing, and utterly dazzling.
This book is unlike any I’ve read. It’s a meditation on feeling like an outsider, a look at interracial relationships (particularly queer ones), and a portrait of the creative process. It’s definitely not a book for everyone but I’m so glad I finally read it.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/getbookedwithlarry/.
Kip has dreamed of being a published author his entire life. His parents even named him Kipling (after the author), so how could that not be his destiny? But while his first manuscript had promise, it’s not ready to be published.
When an editor gives him the idea to shift the focus of his novel to tell the story of Mohammed El Adl, the Black Egyptian tram conductor who had an affair with famed British author E.M. Forster, Kip pounces on the idea, being Black and queer himself. But of course, there’s a catch: the editor is retiring in three weeks and the publishing house has been sold, so if he doesn’t finish in time, there’s no deal.
No matter. Kip has boarded himself in a basement study with “five boxes of Premium Saltine Crackers, three tins of Café Bustelo, and twenty-one one-gallon jugs of Poland Spring Water.” And a hammer. And a gun. And he won’t leave until he’s done, much to the worry of his ex-husband and his ex-best friend.
What ensues is a novel within a novel. We get Mohammed’s story, told while he was in prison, but we also get Kip’s story, and they intersect in many different ways. And as Kip’s mania drives him to finish this book, in essence, Mohammed is telling his story to Kip. It’s fascinating, a little confusing, and utterly dazzling.
This book is unlike any I’ve read. It’s a meditation on feeling like an outsider, a look at interracial relationships (particularly queer ones), and a portrait of the creative process. It’s definitely not a book for everyone but I’m so glad I finally read it.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/getbookedwithlarry/.
April 9, 2023
3.75/5 Quite possibly the strangest story I’ve read this year. It’s not difficult to follow. For a debut, it’s an excellent concept and the execution was successful in some ways. There’s so much going on and on so many levels. I appreciated what the author was doing or attempting to do.
Shelved as 'dnf'
July 1, 2022Pausing it for the moment, but will be picking it up again soon.
May 8, 2022
A Black gay author is on a quest to get published. On this writing quest, he finds many parallels in his character’s lives as his own and this forces him to reflect on his self perceptions and self worth that have been shaped by a white supremacist society.
This coming of age novel poetically intertwines the two stories with the same battles-battles with finding your voice when the world is trying to tell you what your voice should or shouldn’t be and battles with white approval when the stakeholders in their lives-publishers, family, and lovers, are the gatekeepers of acceptance.
Thank you Kismet Books in Verona, WI for this advanced reader copy of this beautiful novel.
This coming of age novel poetically intertwines the two stories with the same battles-battles with finding your voice when the world is trying to tell you what your voice should or shouldn’t be and battles with white approval when the stakeholders in their lives-publishers, family, and lovers, are the gatekeepers of acceptance.
Thank you Kismet Books in Verona, WI for this advanced reader copy of this beautiful novel.
September 6, 2022
4🌟 - I liked it!
Thank you @booksparks and @amistadbooks for the #gifted copy!
A story of searching for yourself, of being seen and known, a novel within a novel, and the main character navigating being a queer Black man while simultaneously writing about one through the affair of E.M Forster and Mohammad el Adl.
The tone is witty and satirical, and Donaldson’s writing is sharp and descriptive. There is a level of absurdity and nonsensicalness to the main character and how the plot unfolds. It is done so in a way that kept me so engaged with finding out what was real and what was going to happen.
This is such genre bending novel dipping into historical and contemporary moments with a touch of magical realism. This story was so engrossing and unlike anything I have read!
Check this one out if you’re looking for something different with strong social commentary, satirical writing, and that will leave you with something to think about when finishing!
Thank you @booksparks and @amistadbooks for the #gifted copy!
A story of searching for yourself, of being seen and known, a novel within a novel, and the main character navigating being a queer Black man while simultaneously writing about one through the affair of E.M Forster and Mohammad el Adl.
The tone is witty and satirical, and Donaldson’s writing is sharp and descriptive. There is a level of absurdity and nonsensicalness to the main character and how the plot unfolds. It is done so in a way that kept me so engaged with finding out what was real and what was going to happen.
This is such genre bending novel dipping into historical and contemporary moments with a touch of magical realism. This story was so engrossing and unlike anything I have read!
Check this one out if you’re looking for something different with strong social commentary, satirical writing, and that will leave you with something to think about when finishing!
September 13, 2022
Outrageously good. A perfect novel. What am I supposed to read now? I reviewed it here: https://booksandbakes.substack.com/i/...
July 9, 2023
Heat makes one slow and lazy, but the cold prepares one for war. I want a mind like winter.
2.5 stars. This was fine? The writing had its ups and down but it was good enough, and the premise was weird in a way that appealed to me. We're following a struggling writer as he locks himself in his basement and labours to complete the book of his heart, about E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl, his Egyptian lover. He also ends up taking a journey to find himself and his voice, and that gets a little wacky and magical realism-y. His relationships with his husband and his best friend open up a lot of conversations about race and sexuality and their intersections, the narrator's place in the world as a gay black man, his sense of non-belonging as a person of colour with Bahamian roots growing up in England, and then later as a Brit in America. We get chapters of his book also, and there's a sort of connection between him and Mohammed. All very interesting, but sometimes the writing really lost me. This did a lot of telling as opposed to showing, which (hear me out!) definitely isn't always a bad thing. But it would sometimes feel like the prose would jump from really competent beautiful writing to a stark pamphlet about social evils. Just kinda jarring. It's not that I wanted less of those themes; I just wish there'd been more nuance in how it was woven in. If that makes sense. Around halfway through I had the sinking feeling that I wasn't going to like this a whole lot, but I kept reading because I did genuinely want to know what was going to happen. And well, now I know. And it was fine. I feel more apathetic about it than anything. So many of the conversations and conclusions felt pointless, and I don't need likeable characters in a lit fic novel, but it would've been nice if I'd at least grown to care about them a little? I didn't. (Especially not the best friend; I'm still sorta squinting my eyes at where that storyline went.)
(Also, nitpick, but this did the thing where it lumped the Caribbean together as a whole when describing people, like saying "Caribbean English" or "of Caribbean descent" which is nigh nonsensical to me. Specify where! Dialect, ethnicity and culture differ so much throughout the islands!)
I listened to the audiobook, and that might have contributed to my feelings, because I sadly didn't like the narrator very much. His voice was fine, but there were soooo many mispronunciations, it was driving me up a wall. For the French words, but a lot of the English ones as well? The accent work also wasn't my favourite. And there were several scenes that were supposed to be emotional, but the reading rendered them silly and kind of melodramatic instead. Alas. I feel vaguely guilty for finishing this, like maybe I should have just DNFed when I realised it wasn't completely my jam, but like I said, my curiosity about where Kipling would end up drove me to continue. The premise really was interesting and when the writing was good, it was good. So I hope to read from this author again.
Content warnings:
“No white people out there. And no God either. A perfect ending.”
July 20, 2023
this book was so incredibly bad 😭 every single character was insufferable, self-absorbed and i literally hated all of them. i get that this was supposed to be “satire” but the writing (bad), story (bad), characters (bad) and other parts of the book did not redeem it. it also was trying to be funny but i didn’t find it funny at all… literally the only reason i’m giving it two stars instead of 1 was bc i semi-enjoyed the little bit of history i got from the book and the cover is magical. THATS IT.
December 6, 2022
“I DON’T NEED THERAPY, I JUST NEED TO GO TO GREENLAND. “
October 12, 2022
Book #24 of 2022
This is the second book (‘My Policeman’ being the first) I’ve read in the past two months which references/details a romantic relationship of the great English novelist, E. M. Forster. That may be the only commonality the two books share.
‘Greenland’ is a wild romp of a novel within a novel, potentially both ghost story and love story, that simultaneously educated and entertained me. I once met the author at his brother’s birthday party and am always excited to read the works of “real people”. This one didn’t disappoint.
Congratulations to David on his debut novel and the well-deserved accolades it continues to receive!
This is the second book (‘My Policeman’ being the first) I’ve read in the past two months which references/details a romantic relationship of the great English novelist, E. M. Forster. That may be the only commonality the two books share.
‘Greenland’ is a wild romp of a novel within a novel, potentially both ghost story and love story, that simultaneously educated and entertained me. I once met the author at his brother’s birthday party and am always excited to read the works of “real people”. This one didn’t disappoint.
Congratulations to David on his debut novel and the well-deserved accolades it continues to receive!
August 22, 2022
Does every writer think they can improve their book by magical realism?..
On the whole you can easily tell this is a debut. The author shoved everything he has ever googled into it: climate change, yoga, Buddhism, Sevilla, Greenland, etc, etc. And all of it is handled with as much eloquence and depth as you would expect from a twitter thread. You would think, coming from a Black man, at least the topic of racism would be explored on a substantial level, but alas, most of Kip's ruminations are extremely insipid and hackneyed. In one scene he is about to sleep with a policeman and this is what he tells him:
"There is clearly only one thing you can do with a gun: kill easily and quickly, right? So, to prevent the plethora of gun murders in America, the simplest solution is to get rid of the weapons that allow these murders."
Who talks like that? And more importantly, who talks like that as they're about to have sex?
Kip struggles with finding his voice and has literally zero personality, except for an overwhelming insecurity, yet when someone tries to help him and tell him what to do, he bristles at his authority being questioned. He is, however, more than ready to pander to the white gaze by switching the narrator of his novel to make it more commercial and finds no problem there. This kind of inconsistency appears all throughout the book and makes it read like a book and its characters mere projections of the author.
The story within the story did not save it either — the love between Mohammed and Forster was compared too much to Kip's relationship with his partner to feel authentic and Donaldson's writing is just not that evocative of anything. You can feel the doubt seeping through every sentence, but also the earnestness of an MFA graduate who thinks he wrote something particularly striking. And don't even get me started on all the references. We get it, girl, you're well-read, but you don't need to show off everything you've ever read to prove that point. You could have written a better novel instead.
On the whole you can easily tell this is a debut. The author shoved everything he has ever googled into it: climate change, yoga, Buddhism, Sevilla, Greenland, etc, etc. And all of it is handled with as much eloquence and depth as you would expect from a twitter thread. You would think, coming from a Black man, at least the topic of racism would be explored on a substantial level, but alas, most of Kip's ruminations are extremely insipid and hackneyed. In one scene he is about to sleep with a policeman and this is what he tells him:
"There is clearly only one thing you can do with a gun: kill easily and quickly, right? So, to prevent the plethora of gun murders in America, the simplest solution is to get rid of the weapons that allow these murders."
Who talks like that? And more importantly, who talks like that as they're about to have sex?
Kip struggles with finding his voice and has literally zero personality, except for an overwhelming insecurity, yet when someone tries to help him and tell him what to do, he bristles at his authority being questioned. He is, however, more than ready to pander to the white gaze by switching the narrator of his novel to make it more commercial and finds no problem there. This kind of inconsistency appears all throughout the book and makes it read like a book and its characters mere projections of the author.
The story within the story did not save it either — the love between Mohammed and Forster was compared too much to Kip's relationship with his partner to feel authentic and Donaldson's writing is just not that evocative of anything. You can feel the doubt seeping through every sentence, but also the earnestness of an MFA graduate who thinks he wrote something particularly striking. And don't even get me started on all the references. We get it, girl, you're well-read, but you don't need to show off everything you've ever read to prove that point. You could have written a better novel instead.
Read
August 2, 2022DNF at 25%
The interrogation of race and need for artistic validation were interesting but the main characters literary pretensions reminded me too much of the worst people I knew from my own grad school days and I just couldn’t get past that.
The interrogation of race and need for artistic validation were interesting but the main characters literary pretensions reminded me too much of the worst people I knew from my own grad school days and I just couldn’t get past that.
July 24, 2022
In the new novel GREENLAND, Kipling Starling (best name ever) is a Black man from the Caribbean, raised in the UK, and living in New York with his husband. After his novel about E.M. Forster is rejected by publishers, Kip switches the point of view of the novel to Forster’s first male lover, an Egyptian named Mohammed. The novel alternates from the first person voice of Kip to a novel-within-a-novel in Mohammed’s voice.
This book was wonderful, surprising, and so readable. I’ve been a fan of E.M. Forster for a long time and recently I’ve read other books inspired by Forster’s life. Alec is the alternate point of view of Maurice. My Policeman is loosely based on Forster’s relationship with a policeman. This novel does a great job of telling stories in Kip and Mohammed’s voice. I really liked that we got the perspective of a Black Caribbean man. In this novel, while describing Mohammed’s life with Forster, Kip’s story is told in parallel. Themes of sexuality and race are highlighted, especially where these intersect causing Kip and Mohammed to feel out of place everywhere in their lives. No one is an iceberg, floating alone in an ocean, hidden beneath the waves, but this book shows the effects of feeling isolation and not being seen, even by those you love.
I was blown away by the writing. The two points of view are distinct, yet harmonious, a conversation between the present and the past. The first half of the book sets up Kip’s and Mohammed’s situations. Some of the most moving sections were flashbacks in Kip’s life where he describes not fitting in anywhere. His relationship with Gus could have been a novel within itself.
This book is for any reader who has ever felt alone and unseen in the world. I highly recommend it.▪️
This book was wonderful, surprising, and so readable. I’ve been a fan of E.M. Forster for a long time and recently I’ve read other books inspired by Forster’s life. Alec is the alternate point of view of Maurice. My Policeman is loosely based on Forster’s relationship with a policeman. This novel does a great job of telling stories in Kip and Mohammed’s voice. I really liked that we got the perspective of a Black Caribbean man. In this novel, while describing Mohammed’s life with Forster, Kip’s story is told in parallel. Themes of sexuality and race are highlighted, especially where these intersect causing Kip and Mohammed to feel out of place everywhere in their lives. No one is an iceberg, floating alone in an ocean, hidden beneath the waves, but this book shows the effects of feeling isolation and not being seen, even by those you love.
I was blown away by the writing. The two points of view are distinct, yet harmonious, a conversation between the present and the past. The first half of the book sets up Kip’s and Mohammed’s situations. Some of the most moving sections were flashbacks in Kip’s life where he describes not fitting in anywhere. His relationship with Gus could have been a novel within itself.
This book is for any reader who has ever felt alone and unseen in the world. I highly recommend it.▪️
Want to read
November 24, 2021
24 November 2021:
OH????? Pardon me, but this sounds FANTASTIC.
OH????? Pardon me, but this sounds FANTASTIC.
August 27, 2022
4.25 rounded down
Displaying 1 - 30 of 151 reviews