Garth Greenwell is a writer of delicacy, beauty, and importance, writing about things you haven’t read about before. A poet turned fiction writer, Greenwell discusses engaging sex through its human facets and aspects, and comma-by-comma telling a reader what is thought and felt by his characters. Cleanness is a calm and passionate book with questions about power, cruelty, tenderness, and the fear that comes along when you reveal yourself to another person. Seeking human truths, Greenwell says he rejected easy stories and wrote into an abyss.