Literary Fiction – Bart Yates

The Language of Love and Loss

arepasch — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:20:59 +0000

AVAILABLE NOW

From the acclaimed author of the award-winning Leave Myself Behind comes a witty, touching, deeply satisfying new novel about a man who has no choice but to turn back and find himself . . .

As it turns out, you can go home again. But sometimes, you really, really don’t want to . . .

Home, for Noah York, is Oakland, New Hampshire, the sleepy little town where Noah’s mother, Virginia, had a psychotic breakdown and Noah got beaten to a pulp as a teenager. Then there were the good times—and Noah’s not sure which ones are more painful to recall.

Now thirty-seven and eking out a living as an artist in Providence, Rhode Island, Noah looks much the same—and swears just as colorfully—as he did in high school. Virginia has become a wildly successful poet who made him the subject of her most famous poem, “The Lost Soul,” a label Noah will never live down. And J.D., the one who got away—because Noah stupidly drove him away—is in a loving marriage with a successful, attractive man whom Noah despises wholeheartedly.

Is it any surprise that Noah wishes he could ignore his mother’s summons to come visit?

But Virginia has shattering news to deliver, and a request he can’t refuse. Soon, Noah will track down the sister and extended family he never knew existed, try to keep his kleptomaniac cousin out of jail, feud with a belligerent neighbor, confront J.D.’s jealous husband—and face J.D. himself, the ache from Noah’s past that never fades. . . . All the while, contending with his brilliant, unpredictable mother.

Bittersweet, hilarious, and moving, and as unapologetically candid and unforgettable as Noah himself, The Language of Love and Loss is a story about growing older, getting lost—and finding your way back to the only truths that really matter.

Leave Myself Behind

arepasch — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:18:41 +0000

The World According To Noah York:

“Anybody who tells you he doesn’t have mixed feelings about his mother is either stupid or a liar.”

“Real life seldom makes me cry. The only thing that gets to me is the occasional Kodak commercial.”

“Sometimes I feel like Michelangelo, chiseling away at all the crap until nothing is left but the exquisite thing in the middle that no one else sees until it’s uncovered for them.”

“Anyway…”

Meet seventeen-year-old Noah York, the hilariously profane, searingly honest, completely engaging narrator of Bart Yates’s astonishing debut novel. With a mouth like a truck driver and eyes that see through the lies of the world, Noah is heading into a life that’s only getting more complicated by the day.

His dead father is fading into a snapshot memory. His mother, the famous psycho-poet, has relocated them from Chicago to a rural New England town that looks like an advertisement for small-town America—a bad advertisement. He can’t seem to start a sentence without using the “f” word. And now, the very house he lives in is coming apart at the seams—literally—torn down bit by bit as he and his mother renovate the old Victorian. But deep within the walls lie secrets from a previous life—mason jars stuffed with bits of clothing, scraps of writing, old photographs—disturbing clues to the mysterious existence of a woman who disappeared decades before. While his mother grows more obsessed and unsettled by the discovery of these homemade reliquaries, Noah fights his own troubling obsession with the boy next door, the enigmatic J.D. It is J.D. who begins to quietly anchor Noah to his new life. J.D., who is hiding terrible, haunting pain behind an easy smile and a carefree attitude.

Soon, the boys’ tentative attraction to each other blossoms into a very real love, one that will shatter the manicured façade of small-town civility and reveal the cruelties and betrayals hiding carefully behind the emotional walls constructed by husbands and wives, mothers and sons, friends and neighbors. And as Noah makes one last startling discovery within the old house, he will come face-to-face with a secret bigger than any heart should have to hold, and a truth more healing than he ever could have hoped for.

Part Portnoy, part Holden Caulfield, never less than truthful, and always fully human, Noah York is a touching and unforgettable character. His story is one of hope and heartbreak, love and redemption, of holding on to old wounds when new skin is what’s needed, and of the power of growing up whole once every secret has been set free.

PURCHASE

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Prairie Lights

ACCOLADES

A Main Selection of the Insight Out Book Club
A Finalist for the Insight Out Violet Quill Award
Winner of the 2004 Alex Award

REVIEWS
“Since The Catcher in the Rye, authors have been hoping to create the next Holden Caulfield and critics have hoped to crown a character with that distinction. The latest temptation for comparison is surely Leave Myself Behind. Bart Yates’ main character and narrator, Noah York, has Caulfield-style teenage authenticity. Noah’s voice is more than just honest or original; it’s real…This isn’t just a novel about a boy dealing with discrimination and fighting for acceptance….We don’t see Noah as simply a gay teen or fatherless child. We see him as a character dealing with life. That’s what makes Leave Myself Behind so great.”—The Plain Dealer

“Noah York is seventeen, but don’t let his age fool you. Noah’s blunt, funny and dead-on narrative will lend this memorable tale of young-but-cynical love a fresh resonance with readers of all ages, gay or straight, male or female. A gripping tale of buried secrets and emerging attractions, but more than that, a story of the familial ties that bind as they grow stronger and pull apart.”—Brian Malloy, author of The Year of Ice

“With Leave Myself Behind, Bart Yates gives us both the laugh-out-loud and refreshingly sincere coming-of-age story we’ve been missing all these years.”—Instinct

“Tart-tongued and appealing, young Noah York is living through the worst and best three months of his life. In Bart Yates’ gripping debut novel, Noah spins a tale that is by turns refreshingly strange and poignantly familiar. What he discovers—about the haunted and haunting past, the always vexed relations between parents and children, the bittersweet mysteries of love—will shock and surprise and move you.”—Paul Russell, author of War Against The Animals

“Yates effectively captures the honest, sometimes silly, often tender interactions between his fragile characters.”—Booklist

“It’s not an easy task these days to come up with a fresh and original gay coming-of-age and coming-out story. Give Bart Yates credit; he takes the challenge and relies on other narrative pulls to launch his tale of how his narrator a smart and smart-alecky artist with Holden Caulfield-like skepticism about the world, comes to self-knowledge about his own sexuality, society’s (especially his high school’s) way of dealing with it…and most importantly, how his love for the boy next door develops. Yates is an author to watch and earns an ‘A’”.—Frontiers

The Brothers Bishop

arepasch — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:14:46 +0000

Tommy and Nathan Bishop are as different as two brothers can be. Carefree and careless, Tommy is the golden boy who takes men into his bed with a seductive smile and turns them out just as quickly. No one can resist him—and no one can control him, either. That salient point certainly isn’t lost on his brother. Nathan is all about control. At thirty-one, he is as dark and complicated as Tommy is light and easy, and he is bitter beyond his years. While Tommy left for the excitement of New York City, Nathan has stayed behind, teaching high school English in their provincial hometown, surrounded by the reminders of their ruined family history and the legacy of anger that runs through him like a scar.

Now, Tommy has come home to the family cottage by the sea for the summer, bringing his unstable, sexual powder keg of an entourage—and the distant echoes of his family’s tumultuous past—with him. Tommy and his lover Philip are teetering on the brink of disaster, while their married friends, Camille and Kyle, perfect their steps in a dance of denial, each partner pulling Nathan deeper into the fray. And when one of Nathan’s troubled students, Simon, begins visiting the house, the slow fuse is lit on a highly combustible mix.

During a heady two-week party filled with drunken revelations, bitter jealousies, caustic jabs, and tender reconciliations, Tommy and Nathan will confront the legacy of their twisted family history—the angry, abusive father and the tragic death of their mother—and finally, to the one secret that has shaped their entire lives. It is a summer that will challenge everything Nathan remembers and unravel Tommy’s carefully constructed facade, drawing them both unwittingly into a drama with echoes of the past…one with unforeseen and very dangerous consequences.

At once both brutally honest and beautifully tender, The Brothers Bishop is a riveting story about the war we wage on those we love best, the cost of forgiveness, and the necessary pain of becoming fully human.

PURCHASE

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

REVIEWS

“…smoothly written, well-paced exploration of issues of fathers and sons, forgiveness and acceptance.” Booklist

“In his assured debut, Leave Myself Behind, Bart Yates wrung bittersweet romance and wry humor out of brutal fag-bashing and family secrets. His sad, witty follow-up, The Brothers Bishop, begins like a snappy beach read, but soon treads equally dark thematic waters. [Yates]… finds hard-won joy in hot-button issues. His compelling debut novel was no fluke. Brian Dillard, Out.com

Bart Yates combines the tender and the toe-curling in a novel about two gay brothers reuniting at the old family home — in the company of a half-crazed clutch of friends….This is a surefire recipe for comedy, but there are undercurrents of tragedy and emotional scarring at work that take the story to disturbing places. Yates puts his novel together like a one-two punch….Nathan, ever the reluctant host, watches as his guests torment each other — and him — and take out their spleen on his furnishings. But it’s Tommy, with his cheeky optimism and his inability to think his actions through, who yanks events into nightmare territory — after which there’s no turning back. …..you can’t put it down — Kilian Melloy, edgeboston.com

“One of the strengths of Yates’s writing is his ability to work out complicated plot points and weave together the threads of the story in a dramatically effective manner.”–Bay Area Reporter

“Bart Yates made an impressive debut with Leave Myself Behind, and he’s come up with an equally intriguing second novel…his story will hold you to its rueful finish.”–Frontiers

The Distance Between Us

arepasch — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:12:47 +0000

Hester Parker resides in an elegant Victorian house in the town of Bolton, Illinois. She spends her evenings listening to the lush tones of Mahler and Chopin, drinking sub-par Merlot, and reflecting on a life that has suddenly fallen apart. At seventy-one, Hester is as brilliant and sharp-tongued as ever, capable of inspiring her music students to soaring heights or reducing them to tears with a single comment. But her wit can’t hide the bitterness that comes with loss—the loss of her renowned violinist husband, Arthur Donovan, who left her for another woman, and the loss of her career as a concert pianist after injuring her wrist.

In this home that holds so many memories, Hester and Arthur raised three volatile children—Paul, a talented and neurotic cellist, Caitlin, an accomplished literary professor who inspires both dread and worship among her students, and Jeremy, sweet, spirited, and as musically gifted as his parents. Though Caitlin and Paul still live in Bolton, both have taken Arthur’s side in the divorce and rarely see their mother.

When Hester decides to rent out the attic apartment to Alex, a young college student, she has no idea of the impact he will have on her life and her family. Good-natured and awkward, with secrets of his own, Alex becomes an unlikely confidant and a means of reconnecting with the world outside Hester’s window. But his presence also exposes old memories and grief that Hester has tried to bury. Over the course of one remarkable month, Hester will confront angry accusations, long-hidden jealousies, and the inescapable truth that tore her family apart and might, against all odds, help reconcile them again. And her brief friendship with Alex will leave each with a surprising legacy—acceptance of the past, a seed of comfort in the present, and hope for the future, wherever it may lead. Tender and funny, heartbreaking and wise, The Distance Between Us is a masterful evocation of family and friendship, of the pain that goes hand-in-hand with love, and of the grace and wisdom that remain when heartbreak finally subsides. Friendship with Alex will leave each with a surprising legacy—acceptance of the past, a seed of comfort in the present, and hope for the future, wherever it may lead. Tender and funny, heartbreaking and wise,

The Distance Between Us is a masterful evocation of family and friendship, of the pain that goes hand-in-hand with love, and of the grace and wisdom that remain when heartbreak finally subsides.

PURCHASE

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

REVIEWS

“Absorbing. Brims with quiet intensity.” Publishers Weekly

“I’m going to go ahead and call it…this book has a sure place on my list of the best books of the year. This is the story of a family at their very worst…and a book with writing at its very best. Alternately funny and unbearably sad, it is ultimately redemptive.” A’n’E Vibe

“Brilliantly written and funny as hell.” Edge Boston

“The Distance Between Us is Bart Yates’ masterpiece (so far), and one of the best books of 2008.” AfterElton.com

“A powerful novel about family dysfunction that transcends ”gay” to achieve emotional universality.” Richard LaBonte, Book Marks

“Yates plays the language as well as his musical genius characters play their instruments. The Distance Between Us is a remarkable story.” The Gazette

The Third Hill North of Town

arepasch — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:10:50 +0000

When fifty-four-year-old Julianna Dapper slips out of a mental hospital in Bangor, Maine, on a June day in 1962, it’s with one purpose in mind. Julianna knows she must go back to the tiny farming community in northern Missouri where she was born and raised. It’s the place where she and her best friend, Ben Taylor, roamed as children, and where her life’s course shifted irrevocably one night long ago.

Embarking on her journey, Julianna meets Elijah Hunter, a shy teenaged African-American boy, and Jon Tate, a young hitchhiker on the run from the law. The three become traveling companions, bound together by quirks of happenstance. And even as the emerging truth about Julianna’s past steers them inexorably toward tragedy, their surprising bond may be the means to transform fear and heartache into the strength that finally guides Julianna home.

The Third Hill North of Town is a haunting, imaginative story of human connection and coincidence–a poignant and powerful novel that ripples with wit and heart.

PURCHASE

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Prairie Lights

REVIEWS

“Imaginative and thought-provoking.” —USA Today

“A brilliant combination of chaos and coincidence. With fresh language and uniquely imperfect characters, Noah Bly weaves a story of a cross-country trek that is both improbable and believable. This fresh, engrossing novel left me convinced of the power of memory, even as it arises from a disturbed mind, and taught me—as Bly promises—the wisdom of faith in the ridiculous.” —Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of August

“This is an eerie, haunting, beautifully realized novel populated by charming misfits and eccentrics.” –Joseph Olshan, author of Cloudland

“Once The Third Hill North of Town turns over its engine, readers will do well to secure their grip on themselves, their loved ones, and any notions they have about guilt and innocence, truth and trust, convenience and blame. By its end, Bly’s whirlwind challenges much of what we believe without necessarily meaning to, including those comfortable views on the infinite gradations we lump under the banner of mental illness, including racism. A hell of a journey.” —Kyle Beachy, author of The Slide

“What a wild ride this novel is! The Third Hill North of Town grabs hold and doesn’t let go. A story of the tragedy and beauty of coincidence and circumstance, this novel is one that brings the unlikeliest characters together in a way that is somehow both surprising and meaningful.” —T. Greenwood, author of Bodies of Water

“Noah Bly takes readers on an unforgettable ride through America. Well written, page-turning, and hard to put down!” —Jim Kokoris, author of The Pursuit of Other Interests

“A glorious, madcap American road novel in the picaresque tradition, The Third Hill North of Town explores a dark uncharted territory where vengefulness and desire and coincidence and consequence blow wild through human hearts, tossing people together and tearing them apart. Think On the Road written by Flannery O’Connor. A profound meditation on the sanctity of improvised friendships.”–Stephen Lovely, author of Irreplaceable