Greenland audiobook

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.Follow me on Instagram

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.

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.

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.

Greenland could be one of the ultimate bibles of the black queer experience, one of the most memorable book 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.

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.)

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.

Narration: 5 StarsStory: 5 StarsDavid 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!

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.

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!

Outrageously good. A perfect novel. What am I supposed to read now? I reviewed it here: https://booksandbakes.substack.com/i/...

Book #24 of 2022This 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!

4.25 rounded down

Greenland by David Santos Donaldson is novel inception: we learn the story of Kip (named after Rudyard Kipling), a novelist living in present-day Brooklyn who’s been struggling to sell his manuscript based on the true love story between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl, an Arab Egyptian man, in 1919. After hundreds of rejections, Kip finally gets a lead when a top publisher requests a meeting with him, despite prefacing the meeting by saying she, too, is passing on his novel. Kip is desperate to hang onto this lead and begs her to reconsider her decision – she agrees to do so on two stipulations: 1) that he rewrite the entire novel from the perspective of Mohammed, and 2) that he completes the full rewrite of the novel within three weeks, before the publishing house she works for gets acquired by a larger house. Rather than admit the impossibility of this task, Kip decides to literally barricade himself in the basement of the Fort Greene brownstone he shares with his partner Ben, with nothing but some water, saltine crackers, espresso, and his laptop. As we read along with sections of the novel as he writes them (hence the novel within a novel approach), we learn why Kip was originally hesitant to embrace Mohammed’s perspective as he feels it's one that hits too close to home. Kip has always struggled with his sense of identity (in fact, the first novel he writes during his failed attempt at an MFA was called The Nowherians, the Caribbean-English word for people of no abode), both back home in England, and now in America, where white Americans perceive him as too-black, and black Americans perceive of him as not black enough. While this novel was especially fun to read as a writer (some of the ridiculousness of his desperation to be published had me laughing out loud or wanting to cry), what really made me love it was Kip’s deep explorations into himself, the interrogations of race and queerness, and the wonders of discovery he makes. And as a fellow literary nerd, I loved reading the many, many references he makes within!