Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

October 12, 2015
Yapa’s chilling debut is set amid the real-life protests that disrupted the 1999 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle, which resulted in hundreds of arrests, police resignations, and an increased media spotlight on the WTO. The novel follows a fictional group of police officers, dissidents, and a diplomat as they struggle through the summit’s first chaotic day, full of tear gas, epiphany, and violence. On one side are the activists and their hangers-on: Victor, a nomadic 19-year-old trying to sell weed to protesters; King and John Henry, veteran nonviolent advocates who arrive at the protests to act as medics; and Charles, a political representative from Sri Lanka who quickly finds himself a target of both protesters and police. Representing the law are Chief Bill Bishop, Victor’s estranged stepfather, bent on protecting his city; and officers Tim and Julia, whose past run-ins with terrorism and riots influence their fierce approach to peace. Yapa shows great skill in juggling these seven narratives as he builds a combustible environment, offering brief glimpses of the past to round out each character—and in the case of King, to reveal a deadly secret. As the peaceful protests turn brutal, however, the author’s firm grasp of his story loosens a bit. But by the novel’s end, Yapa regains his stride, resulting in a memorable, pulse-pounding literary experience. Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

November 1, 2015
A ground-level reimagining of the violent protests at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, told from a host of perspectives. The emotional core of Yapa's debut novel is the fraughtly named Victor, a 19-year-old who's come to Seattle after a few years of globe-trotting to sharpen his social-justice sensibilities--and to confront his stepfather, the fraughtly named Bishop, head of the city's police force. The downtown streets are swarming with protesters determined to halt the movement of WTO delegates, who are seen as pillaging poorer nations in the name of free trade, and the story bounces dutifully among a handful of characters representing the various factions. There's John Henry, a middle-aged and weathered protest vet; Timothy, a hotheaded cop impatient with nonviolent resistance; King, a live-wire tough-talker; Julia, a cop who's softened following a stint in Los Angeles policing the Rodney King riots; and Charles, a Sri Lankan delegate baffled by the chaos in the streets but determined to make his meetings. Yapa's grasp of the pre-9/11 global diaspora is sound, and he's knowledgeable about the tactics that both protesters and law enforcement use against each other. But lacking much in the way of deep characterization--we are meant to believe that Bishop made a bonfire of Victor's mother's lefty books and that Victor fled the country because of it--the novel is largely a parade of pat sentiments and facile contradictions. King is committed to nonviolence--but does she have a violent past? Charles cares for his countrymen--but is he selling them out? The purpler prose only highlights the thinness of the storytelling: Bishop has "a heart full of loss and a head full of doom"; chanting, John Henry says, is "how we hold the fear in our mouths and transform it into gold." American novels about protest have been thin on the ground since the days of Ken Kesey and Edward Abbey. The genre deserves a better revival effort than this.

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November 1, 2015
Yapa's gripping debut offers a fiery and twisting fictional take on the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. Seen through the eyes of multiple narrators, the events surrounding the shutdown of Seattle's streets are brought to vivid life and laid bare. A young runaway is inadvertently caught up in the fervor; a seasoned organizer acts with compassion and strength; the chief of police resists government pressures to turn against the protestors; a WTO delegate from Sri Lanka seeks a foothold for his country in the powerful organizationall of these characters and more collide with each other in the charged atmosphere that so many watched from afar in 1999. Yapa is a skilled storyteller, revealing just enough about his characters and the direction of his plot to engage his readers, yet effectively building dramatic impact by withholding certain key details. In the style of Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin (2009), Yapa ties together seemingly disparate characters and narratives through a charged moment in history, showing how it still affects us all in different ways.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2015

Yapa studied with the likes of Peter Carey and Zadie Smith, and his editor bought the manuscript in a single weekend; the galley was then in great demand at BookExpo America. All good news for this first novel, set during Seattle's 1999 World Trade Organization protests, as edgy but resilient runaway Victor weaves through the throngs, trying to sell marijuana. Smart, silky-smooth language, pacing, and jigsawing of the various stories; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2015

This debut novel set during the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) riots in Seattle is a punch in the gut. In the years after Kent State and Rodney King but before the Black Lives Matter movement, the Battle of Seattle stands out as an example of poorly planned police response to public protest, and Yapa shines a blinding Maglite on the scene. He starts with Victor, the estranged adopted son of the police chief. All Victor wants is to unload a large quantity of marijuana so he can "break free from the gravity of home's heavy hold." Instead, he gets mixed up with John Henry, a middle-aged idealistic revolutionary and King, his badass former lover who ministers to the teargassed crowd with Maalox(R)-infused water. In addition to Chief Bishop, who's acutely aware that his long-lost son has reappeared under an I-5 underpass, there are two cops: Julia, and her partner Park, severely disfigured and completely insane. Rounding out the cast is Dr. Charles Wickramsinghe, a delegate from Sri Lanka, whose life's work has been negotiating for his country's acceptance into the WTO. VERDICT Yapa's writing is visceral and unsparing. Noteworthy, capital-I Important and a ripping read, his novel will be on many "best" lists in 2016. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/15; "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 9/1/15.]--Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2015

This debut novel set during the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) riots in Seattle is a punch in the gut. In the years after Kent State and Rodney King but before the Black Lives Matter movement, the Battle of Seattle stands out as an example of poorly planned police response to public protest, and Yapa shines a blinding Maglite on the scene. He starts with Victor, the estranged adopted son of the police chief. All Victor wants is to unload a large quantity of marijuana so he can "break free from the gravity of home's heavy hold." Instead, he gets mixed up with John Henry, a middle-aged idealistic revolutionary and King, his badass former lover who ministers to the teargassed crowd with Maalox(R)-infused water. In addition to Chief Bishop, who's acutely aware that his long-lost son has reappeared under an I-5 underpass, there are two cops: Julia, and her partner Park, severely disfigured and completely insane. Rounding out the cast is Dr. Charles Wickramsinghe, a delegate from Sri Lanka, whose life's work has been negotiating for his country's acceptance into the WTO. VERDICT Yapa's writing is visceral and unsparing. Noteworthy, capital-I Important and a ripping read, his novel will be on many "best" lists in 2016. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/15; "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 9/1/15.]--Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.