Bringing Lit to LATE NIGHT
Seth Meyers added a new episode to his “Late Night Literary Salon” by interviewing Sunil Yapa, the author of the just-released debut novel, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist (Hachette/Lee Boudreaux Books; OverDrive Sample) last night. Meyers, who has a personal interest in literature, hand picks the authors he wants to interview. Earlier, he’s featured novelists Hanya Yanagihara, Marlon James (before he won the Booker) and Lauren Groff.
Meyers and Yapa briefly discuss the novel’s story – one chaotic day during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle – and then turn to Yapa’s childhood growing up with a father who is a “Marxist professor of geography.” A native of Sri Lanka, Yapa’s father first arrived in the U.S. in 1964 and was amazed by the crowds that greeted his plane. It turned out that the Beatles also happened to be on the same flight.
NOTE: if the video doesn’t play, link to it here.
In part two of the interview, Yapa reveals the heartbreak of losing his only draft of Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist and having to completely rewrite it.
Yapa’s appearance has yet to boost sales or holds of the book, which is getting largely positive reviews.
The Washington Post‘s Ron Charles says it is a “taut …fantastic debut” that “arrives like a punch in the chest” and goes on to compare it Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night.
The Rumpus says that “Yapa does a heroic job of journeying into the heart of this complex set of events, illustrating how they grow out of and impact the character’s lives. And while the heart may be the size of a fist, here it paradoxically seems to encompass the whole world and all of its citizens, who pulse with its every beat.”
Flavorwire offers “Your Heart is a Muscle The Size of a Fist is the rare contemporary novel about protest that has the courage to side with the protester — but does so skillfully enough to maintain its literary authority.”
As we reported earlier it is an IndieNext pick as well.
NPR’s reviewer Michael Schaub offers a very different take, however. In a pull-no-punches review, he says “Yapa isn’t an untalented writer, but he lets his writing get away from him way too often … After a while, it begins to feel like you’re getting lectured by a hippie professor who writes messages for fortune cookies on the side.”