Author Archives: Jennifer Bort Yacovissi

“Publishers, Publicists, and a Reading Public” at MWA Annapolis

On Wednesday, October 21st, I presented “Publishers, Publicists, and a Reading Public,” at the monthly meeting of the Annapolis chapter of the Maryland Writers’ Association at Maryland Hall. The talk addressed my ongoing experiences as a debut novelist, focusing on many of the lessons I’ve learned–often the hard way–leading up to and following the April 2015 publication of Up the Hill to Home, including the concept of direct submissions to publishers (that is, traditional publishing without an agent), what to expect when working with a publicist, and the many challenges associated with building readership.

A video of the presentation (in three parts) is posted to the MWAA website.

Book Review: Undermajordomo Minor

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This review originally appeared in the Washington Independent Review of Books on 22 September 2015.

Anyone already familiar with Patrick DeWitt’s earlier fiction, like The Sisters Brothers, will immediately recognize his signature tone, which is easy to spot but hard to describe.

It’s sort of arch, breezy commentary, whether it’s coming from the thoughtful, well-spoken-but-naïve hired gun who narrates Sisters or from the third-person narrator of his latest novel, Undermajordomo Minor, which is as hard to categorize as his writing style.

The book jacket suggests it’s a fable, but a fable has a moral. This is more like a fairytale, something wispy and ephemeral, with a half-dreamy, half-nightmarish quality, and perhaps a bit of happily-ever-after thrown in.

Perhaps.

Like a fairytale, this story takes place in no definitive time or location. It has the feeling of someplace misty and Eastern European in the mid-19th century. We meet Lucien Minor — known as Lucy — on the day he is leaving home, for the first time, at age 17.

His mother isn’t sorry to see him go, since she blames him for somehow transferring his recent life-threatening illness to his father, who promptly dies. She’s not far wrong, since we see the mysterious visitor who shows up at Lucy’s bedside in the middle of the night, has a quiet conversation with him, and then — in a scene pulled directly from The Green Mile’s John Coffey playbook — inhales the illness out of Lucy and wanders off to deposit it in his father.

Lucy has told the visitor that what he wants from his life is for something to happen. He feels that he has more to offer than do the large, oafish peasants who surround him, a populace who cannot possibly appreciate his more refined, cerebral qualities. Unfortunately, he has no prospects.

Father Raymond, the parish priest who “followed the word of God to the letter and at night felt the Holy Spirit coursing through his body like bird flocks,” helps to find him a position by writing to all the surrounding castles. He receives a single answer from the majordomo of the Castle Von Aux, extending a job offer, which is how Lucy ends up becoming Undermajordomo Minor.

(With this book following The Sisters Brothers, it seems possible to imagine that DeWitt works by dreaming up a clever title and then writing a book to go with it. There are probably worse ways to come up with a subject.)

And so Lucy commences on his journey: Five minutes from home, he meets the man to whom his mother has already rented his bedroom; a delay at the train station gives his unfaithful girlfriend and her hulking new lover time to humiliate him in front of all his fellow passengers; and he watches in the dark train car as a shadowy man and boy methodically rob all the sleeping passengers, and then falls in with them without immediately realizing who they are.

The older man, Memel, and the boy, Mewe, live in the village of the Castle Von Aux. In short order, we meet Adolphus, the exceptionally handsome and charismatic leader of the local rebel army; Klara, Memel’s beautiful daughter to whom Adolphus believes he is betrothed; and some of the denizens of the lightly populated Castle Von Aux, like Agnes the cook and Mr. Olderglough, the self-titled majordomo who uses Lucy as an errand boy.

There are mysteries, like what actually happened to Lucy’s predecessor, poor Mr. Broom; why is Lucy told to lock himself into his room each night; and where is the castle’s owner? We finally meet the feral and practically subhuman specter of Baron Von Aux, a man thoroughly wrecked by his love for a heartless woman who happens to be his wife. When Lucy intervenes to send a note to the absent baroness, a host of unintended consequences naturally unspools.

The story is surprisingly straightforward and unadorned, though the prose oozes with that odd DeWitt charm that makes it compelling. Told from Lucy’s point of view, the tale has a clueless innocence that is both comical and sweet. Dialogue is clipped and formal, but the effect is often laugh-out-loud funny. At those moments when it’s tempting for a reader to conclude that Lucy is a complete idiot, it’s worth remembering that he is 17, an age at which everyone is a complete idiot.

If there is, in fact, a moral to this story, it’s a simple and universal one. When Lucy finds himself as undone by love as the baron, poor Mr. Broom, Memel, and Memel’s best friend, Tomas, he plummets into the underworld (literally) and fights an Odyssean path back to the surface to return to Klara.

When he later admits to his old benefactor, Father Raymond, that he is in love, the priest asks what it’s like, and Lucy tells him, “It is a glory and a torment.”

“Really? Would you not recommend it, then?”

“I would recommend it highly. Just to say that it is not for the faint of heart.”

Lucy is not such an idiot after all.

Book Review: In the Language of Miracles

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This review first appeared in Washington Independent Review of Books on 9 September 2015.

So much is conveyed in the first paragraph of Rajia Hassib’s eloquent debut novel, In the Language of Miracles: protagonist Khaled’s status as favorite of his devoutly Islamic grandmother, Ehsan; her disappointment in her daughter’s failure to follow the same devout traditions; and her firm belief that such lapses will lead to disaster for the beautiful boy, as evidenced by Khaled’s life-threatening illness, which has prompted Ehsan’s emergency visit from Egypt.

“His mother’s insistence on throwing him an elaborate birthday party a few weeks earlier must have been the last straw. ‘Why parade the boy around? Why invite people’s envy?’ Ehsan would repeatedly mumble as she tended to the sick child. They might as well have injected him with bacteria and saved the money spent on the inflatables.”

That peek at a sly sense of humor is deceptive, though, because the story that Hassib goes on to relate is heart-wrenching. Meet the Al-Menshawy family: physician father Samir, stay-at-home mother Nagla, eldest son Hosaam, middle child Khaled, and youngest Fatima, along with the frequently visiting Ehsan.

Samir and Nagla made the leap as newlyweds from Alexandria, Egypt, to the U.S., ending up finally in small, suburban Sommerset, N.J., where Samir starts his medical practice and the family grows to be best friends with their next-door neighbors, Jim, Cynthia, and Natalie Broadbent.

The crux of the story, though, is the horrific incident that took the lives of longtime sweethearts Hosaam and Natalie, the first anniversary of which is quickly approaching as chapter one opens. The tragedy hangs over everything and everyone, and has separated the Al-Menshawys from the community, from their former best friends, and from each other. Each of the surviving family members is wrapped in his or her own form of grief, and their lonely attempts to find a way through increasingly polarize and isolate them from each other.

There is so much going on in Language, so many quiet layers that build on each other, and Hassib guides us through the nuanced implications of culture, religion, community, gender, familial relationships, even birth order that together form the unique lens we all use to view one another and to experience the world around us.

Samir is fully committed to his adopted nation, believing in his and his family’s ability to assimilate and be accepted as true Americans, while also clinging to very traditional beliefs about his role as the head of the family and each member’s role in relation to his.

He is certain he understands the American character and way of thinking, yet he is utterly tone deaf in his dealings with the community he’s lived in for years. Even his unassimilated mother-in-law understands what a poor idea it is for the family to attend the inevitable memorial service for Natalie. That he wishes to speak at the service is a source of dread for all of us; a disaster is in the making.

While Khaled is at the book’s center as the ever-obedient middle child now living even more deeply in his dead brother’s shadow — the standard miseries of adolescence paling in the face of chronic physical and social-media harassment, the constant fear of being recognized in public, and the sense that his family has turned its back on him — it is Nagla who is the book’s heart.

Our view into her grief, guilt, and sense of helplessness as a mother makes her universally accessible, and demands we consider how we would act under similar untenable circumstances. Nagla suffers through the judgmental and conflicting advice that her friend Ameena and mother Ehsan, two highly observant Muslim women, heap upon her.

“Both her mother and Ameena had an uncanny ability to quote the Qur’an in support of their arguments, even if their views opposed each other, even, she now realized, using the same verse to support two different sides of an argument,” but both sides telling Nagla she is wrong. She and Samir can no longer speak to each other without shouting, but Ehsan sides with Samir, even though she doesn’t agree with him. Nagla is truly alone.

Hassib’s book invites the question of how this scenario would have played out if the families involved were both from the same white, suburban, middle-class, typical “American” background. The answer, perhaps, is not so much differently.

The cultural disparity here makes the situation more fraught — particularly in a post-9/11 America and a 24-hour “news” cycle that has elevated public defamation to a full-contact team sport — but with the exception of Cynthia’s bigoted sister Pat, the people of Sommerset aren’t ostracizing the Al-Menshawys for being Muslim, but for having taken something from them that they can never recover.

Hassib herself only moved to the U.S. when she was 23, and yet she has an impeccable ear for the twanging crosscurrents of American culture, xenophobic melting pot that it is. She heads many of her chapters with roughly equivalent English and Arabic sayings that highlight both similarities and differences in the cultures.

And Hassib weaves in snippets from the Qur’an that feature a number of figures prominent in the Old Testament, helping to remind non-Muslim readers of the tightly linked origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It’s an empathetic reminder that our similarities are always larger than our differences.

2015 Gold Medal from Readers’ Favorite

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On the heels of receiving a five-star review from Readers’ Favorite, Up the Hill to Home was also named the 2015 Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal recipient in the category of Christian Historical Fiction. Though readers may be surprised by the category, since the book does not necessarily fit the traditional image of Christian fiction, Up The Hill to Home tells the story of a Catholic family for whom faith is a crucial element of both personal identity and community, and the theme of faith as a bedrock of this family suffuses every part of the story.

It’s interesting to note that Up the Hill to Home is demonstrating wide appeal among readers of many different genres, since the book also garnered a Perfect 10 rating from Romance Reviews Today, making it eligible for RRT’s Best Book of the Year designation, even though the book also doesn’t fit the mold of what most readers would consider a romance novel.

In her review for Readers’ Favorite, Tracy Slowiak highlights the book’s evocation of time and place in history:

“I loved, loved, loved Jennifer Bort Yacovissi’s new book, Up the Hill to Home. This debut novel is so beautifully and lovingly written that if I didn’t know that it was based on the author’s ancestors, I would have assumed as such. Up the Hill to Home follows the life of Lillie Voith, beloved wife of Ferd, only daughter of Emma and Charley Beck, and mother of nine, soon to be ten. When Lillie discovers her pregnancy, she happily asks Ferd to bring her the treasured memory box, the sweet custom she follows when she is expecting each of her children. When Lillie takes a fall in the basement one day, then develops a worrying cough, everyone starts to fear that they may lose the glue that holds the family together.

“Up the Hill to Home is, in this reviewer’s opinion, a masterpiece in the genre of historical fiction. Taking place in the late 1800s until the 1930s, the experiences, conversations and surroundings of the Beck and Voith families ring so truly of the time period that when I needed to take a break from reading, I’d have to shake my head a bit to clear my mind and bring myself back to the present moment. This book would appeal to any reader of authentic historical fiction, any lover of fiction in general, and any reader longing for a story that showcases true familial love and connectedness. I simply cannot recommend this book any more. Jennifer Bort Yacovissi’s Up the Hill to Home is a treasure, and one to which you should definitely treat yourself.”

Eight Debut Authors Tweet their Experience

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When Foreword Reviews magazine featured eight debut authors in its Summer 2015 issue, it introduced the work of eight writers from widely different backgrounds and geographical regions writing across the spectrum of literary genres. It also introduced the eight writers to each other. Connecting through various social media platforms, the Foreword Reviews 8–as we’ve now dubbed ourselves–decided to try using a Twitter chat session to discuss some of our experiences as debut authors. In a fast, free-flowing, and fun half-hour on August 20th, using the hashtag #debutnovel and including @ForewordReviews, we discussed how long it took us to write, what the editing experience was like, what was most enjoyable or memorable, what we would do differently if we had a do-over, how we’re connecting with readers, and a range of related topics. Foreword Reviews was wonderfully supportive of the effort, even blogging about it in advance, and these eight debut authors are grateful for everything the folks there have done to spread the word.

Historical Novels Review Summer Issue

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The following three reviews first appeared in the August 2015 online and print editions of the Historical Novels Review, published by the Historical Novel Society.

LANDFALLS, Naomi J. Williams, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, 311 pp

To say that Landfalls, Naomi J. Williams’ debut novel, is thoroughly delightful may sound too dismissive of what is a deeply researched and ingeniously told story, but there it is: it’s a joy to read. The book is a reimagining of the Lapérouse expedition, which set sail from France in 1785 on an ambitious scientific voyage to explore beyond the boundaries of the known world, and was not heard from again after it departed Botany Bay in 1788. Virtually none of the story takes place while the two ships of the expedition—the Boussole and the Astrolabe—are underway, since it is in fact about the landfalls that the voyage makes. The story is told chronologically starting with the outfitting of the voyage’s stat-of-the-art navigational equipment in England, and moving forward on the journey to Chile, Alaska, Macao, Russia, and beyond. Differences in geography aside, what gives this story its unique appeal is that each chapter is told from a different person’s point of view. Various members of the expedition, their relatives, people they meet, even some whom they don’t, are all represented here, sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even as letters or reports. Each one is believable and fully rendered, in equal measures to dramatic, comedic, or tragic effect. The language Williams uses for each of her characters is immediately accessible, even modern, and yet it feels genuine to the time, place, and person.

A significant historical record exists of this voyage that never returned, and it’s clear that Williams used much of it. This novel must have been a vast undertaking, but the reader sees none of that heavy lifting. Instead Williams simply weaves in the details that allow her to take her readers around the world on a wondrous journey of discovery.

*****

THE BURIED GIANT, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015, 317 pp

In considering the synopsis of his seventh novel, The Buried Giant, long-time fans of Kazuo Ishiguro’s restrained and always-compelling prose may find themselves puzzled at what seems like a departure for him: in sixth century Britain, in a primitive land of fog, rain, ogres, and dragons, an old married couple decides finally to visit a son they haven’t seen in years. They cannot remember what caused their separation, and they’re not even sure which village he lives in. In fact, none of their fellow villagers seem able to form or keep memories, nor do they notice the lack. Nonetheless, Axl and Beatrice are determined to overcome the fog of forgetfulness as they set out on a fraught journey. Along the way, they pick up traveling companions who are on quests of their own, and begin to recover fragments of their lost memory, little of it comforting. Together, they find answers to the mysteries that have plagued them and their country for an age, though the discovery seems destined to unleash even greater woe. This is an Arthurian fairy tale for grown-ups, and one that asks quietly pointed questions, such as how much of a person’s identity is held in the memories she carries, or whether, when it comes to seeking justice—or is it simply vengeance?—for a great wrong, it isn’t better for everyone to let sleeping dragons lie.

In Ishiguro’s hands, the tale seems less fantastic than simply of another time, when ogres and pixies were part of the natural landscape, much like wooly mammoths on the ancient Siberian plain. Characters interact with a formality that seems almost Kabuki-like, but it feels organic to the time and place. And by now, Ishiguro’s fans should no longer be surprised at how he can still surprise us.

*****

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, VOLUME 1: SEARCH FOR MY HEART: A NOVEL, Larry Kramer, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015, 880 pp

In his latest novel, Larry Kramer wonders at the masochistic tendencies of Americans, to have invited the likes of Cotton Mather and John Winthrop to judge us so harshly and to instill in us an abiding shame over everything that makes us human. He seems to count on that masochism, however, to imagine people will read this book, 800+ pages of painful and ugly history tracing the origin of both America and what he calls the UC: the Underlying Condition, HIV/AIDS.

The conceit here is that Kramer’s alter ego Fred Lemish is writing this history, and he collects around him a cast of oddball characters who contribute their knowledge and scholarship to the effort. Lemish starts this history in pre-human times to argue that the UC has been with us always, biding its time. We even hear directly from the UC, self-aware and plotting its own advancement. The volume simply quits sometime after WWII. Presumably Volume II brings us into present day.

This book wants to grab Americans by their lapels, shake them, and bellow, “Stop with the blind hero worship, the whitewashed legends of this country! Stop imagining that it was noble and high-minded! It was ugly! It’s still ugly! Stop ignoring all the evidence that’s right in front of you!” But Kramer can’t have it both ways. He argues that only heterosexuals or closeted gays have written history, chronically hiding unpleasant truths, but here he is hiding his version of history inside of a novel, thereby letting himself and his readers off the hook.

It’s odd that Kramer calls this Search for My Heart, since he hammers home an image of an America that is heartless, brutal, rapacious, and cruel. This is the book that only Kramer could write, but for whom has he written it?

WIROB Review of Up the Hill to Home

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In today’s edition of Washington Independent Review of Books, reviewer Katy Bowman offers a lovely and detailed critique of Up the Hill to Home. Ms. Bowman says, “Yacovissi shines in her descriptions of daily life, whether that life is taking place in Civil War-era Washington as Jubal Early and his Confederate troops are closing in, or in the crowded mid-1930s household that Lillie calls home as the book begins.” Particularly gratifying is her assessment of the book’s “complex characters,” in which she notes, “She brings the people and the places to life in such a way that they take up residence in your imagination, fully formed and breathing.”

“Powerful, gorgeously imparted” says Foreword Reviews

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The Summer 2015 print issue of Foreword Reviews has hit the newsstands, and features reviewer Michelle Schingler’s article, “Welcome to the Big Time: highly touted authors make the most of their debuts”. As promised, literary historical novel Up the Hill to Home is highlighted as one of eight “dazzling first novels”. In her review of the book, Schingler notes, “Yacovissi’s command of language makes for fluid and tactile reading,” and ends by saying, “Up the Hill to Home is an emotionally powerful, gorgeously imparted family saga.”

Foreword Reviews is available at selected Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million stores. It was distributed at the recent BookExpo America conference, and will also be distributed at the upcoming American Library Association conference and the Beijing International Book Fair.

Virtual Book Tour: No Need to Pack

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I’ve been on a virtual book tour since my debut historical novel Up the Hill to Home came out on 28 April. I’ve met lots of people online and on the air, and had a great time without needing to hit the road. Many thanks to the folks who interviewed me, invited me to guest post on their blog, reviewed the book, featured the book, and made the book available to their readers. Thanks especially to all the readers who were interested enough to sign up to win hardcover, paperback, and ebook editions of Up the Hill to Home, and congratulations to those who won!

Here’s a round-up of all the places I’ve visited on the tour:

4/20: Late Last Night Books review

4/28 to 5/11: Goodreads Book Giveaway (577 people signed up!)

5/3: Big Blend Radio with Lisa and Nancy, on-air interview–hands down, the most fun ever!

5/4: Night Owl Reviews online chat

5/5: Romance Reviews Today review (received a Perfect 10, which makes it eligible for their Best Book of the Year!)

5/6: Curled Up with a Good Book review, interview, and giveaway

5/7: Book Release Daily listing

5/11-5/26: The Celebrity Cafe book giveaway (13,877 people signed up for three books–wow!)

5/12: Fresh Fiction guest blog post and giveaway

5/13: The True Book Addict listing and giveaway

5/14-5/28: Library Thing giveaway

5/15: Romance University guest blog post

5/18: Novels Alive feature

5/18: Foreword Reviews magazine summer print edition ships; see more on the debut fiction highlight

5/20: Historical Fiction Connection listing and giveaway

5/20: Late Last Night Books interview

5/21: Unusual Historicals excerpt, interview, and giveaway

5/27: Indie Book Week guest blog posting

5/29: Romance Reviews Today interview

All the credit for planning, scheduling, and execution of the tour goes to the incomparable Stephanie Barko!

Historical Novels Review Spring Issue

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The following three reviews first appeared in the May 2015 online and print editions of the Historical Novels Review, published by the Historical Novel Society.

DARKNESS AT NOON, Arthur Koestler (translated by Daphne Hardy), Scribner, 2015, 272 pp

This chilling, fictionalized account of one man’s victimization in the Moscow show trials of the 1930s is Scriber’s re-release of Koestler’s classic 1941 novel depicting the horrors of living under a totalitarian regime. While it’s historical fiction now, it was thoroughly contemporary when he wrote it in Paris in 1940; Daphne Hardy translated it from German to English as he wrote, and was able to smuggle the manuscript out of France mere days before Paris fell to the Germans in WWII.

The novel introduces us to Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov, a loyal, revered, and leading member of the Communist Party since the 1917 Revolution, just as he is jailed by his own compatriots as a traitor. The novel is historically accurate in its description of how the Party began to devour its own as Stalin (here referred to as “No. 1”), who was never as popular or competent as Lenin (“the old man”), sought to shore up and protect his power base. The primary tenets of the Party—that the Party is never wrong, the individual is meaningless, the end justifies any means, and that wrong ideas are crimes punishable by death—all support the systematic purges of the old guard. Rubashov is hardly innocent of following the logic of this warped philosophy to its bloody ends himself, but now finds himself its next victim. As he tells his tormentors: “I plead guilty to having placed the idea of man above the idea of mankind.”

It’s a strong story told with compelling, horrifying realism. This is a timely release from Scribner, and I recommend it as an apt reminder of what life was like for millions under rapacious, repressive Soviet Communist rule, where mercy was considered poison.

****

WEST POINT 1915: EISENHOWER, BRADLEY, AND THE CLASS THE STARS FELL ON, Michael E. Haskew, Zenith Press, 2014, 208 pp

This book marks the hundredth anniversary of the 1915 graduating class of West Point, the “class the stars fell on”, so named because 59 of its 164 graduates attained the rank of brigadier general or higher, the most of any class in history. It seems clear that what fell on these men was World War II, since by that time they were deep in their army careers with long years of training and experience, which ended up serving the country exceedingly well. Omar Bradley suggests that his not going to France during WWI, far from ending his (or Eisenhower’s) career as he had feared, helped him to approach the demands of a mobile tank- and air-based war with an open mind, unsaddled with concepts of trench warfare. The Americans also had time to watch and learn from the British and Germans. Excellent (George C. Marshall) and cautionary (Douglas MacArthur) role models may have helped; Eisenhower’s affability and coalition building were undeniably crucial. Haskew’s research is exceptional; his skipping from one man’s story to another with only a paragraph break is a bit hard to track, but he’s done a good job of giving each man his due.

****

FOUR FACES OF TRUTH, Harriette C. Rinaldi, Fireship Press, 2014, 191 pp

Four fictional narrators take turns recounting the horrors wrought by the Khmer Rouge in Four Faces of Truth, Harriette Rinaldi’s noble effort to put the meteoric rise of this bloody regime into historical context. The title refers both to the different perspectives provided by the narrators—a Buddhist monk, an original party member, a traditional Khmer healer, and a Canadian archeologist—and to the ancient stone towers of Angkor Thom, topped with faces gazing out to the four points of the compass. Rinaldi is a master of her subject, having spent three crucial years (1972-1975) of her 27 years with the CIA in Cambodia. Her stated purpose in writing this account as a novel is to make this largely forgotten or ignored history more accessible. Unfortunately, her first-person narrators are burdened with having to convey a huge amount of historically accurate information about real people and real events, and the result is less satisfying than if Rinaldi had chosen to use, for example, literary non-fiction to tell this story. In particular, the dialog is wooden and used primarily to make observations about culture, history, or events. None of her characters are fully realized people in their own right, which is ironic since the driving horror of the Khmer Rouge was how avidly it sought to dehumanize its subjects, stripping them of all vestiges of individuality. The result here is that the reader is held at arm’s length from what ought to be a much more emotionally moving story. It’s a story worth telling, though; as the last narrator observes, the current Cambodian government is as corrupt as every one before it, still filled with Khmer Rouge henchmen, and bent on a campaign of actively forgetting the past.