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Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

Sunil Yapa

Why we're reading this: October selection for Tuesdays with Tea to be discussed on 10/10
[close] October selection for Tuesdays with Tea to be discussed on 10/10

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Jan 05, 2016 Marlene England rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book. Wow. I think I held my breath for the last 100 pages. Powerful. Beautiful. Deep. So much to think about. Can't wait to put this in customers' hands and say 'Here. Read this.' ...more

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Jan 16, 2016 Charlie Smith rated it liked it · review of another edition

Original, complete review available at blog, HereWeAreGoing, here: https://herewearegoing.wordpress.com/...

Another debut novel by another MFA holder. One review (or two, maybe) talk of how good a heart this book has, how it means well. It takes place during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, and it dances around one after another dichotomy and contradiction of character, basically good people doing rotten things in complicated circumstances. Admirable aim, exploration of such Original, complete review available at blog, HereWeAreGoing, here: https://herewearegoing.wordpress.com/...

Another debut novel by another MFA holder. One review (or two, maybe) talk of how good a heart this book has, how it means well. It takes place during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, and it dances around one after another dichotomy and contradiction of character, basically good people doing rotten things in complicated circumstances. Admirable aim, exploration of such things, but the entire thing felt academic to me, without grounding in real, earned emotion.

Once upon a time, decades ago, I took a directing class. When it came time to present the scenes, one student-director had given the actor playing Don, a blind singer-songwriter, the action of throwing his music to the ground during an argument with his Mother, who was railing against his musical, free-spirited lifestyle. The professor stopped the scene there and ejected the student-director from the class (never go to a theatre school, kids, where the faculty is comprised mostly of people bitter about having failed to succeed at what they are now teaching) and while the punishment was too harsh, the reasoning was sound. Don loved his music, it was symbol of the very self and life he was defending, and no anger could justify his throwing it to the ground, an action which would only have been appropriate had the director meant to ultimately give sympathy and victory to the Mother. All wrong.

For me, in Your Heart Is A Muscle The Size Of A Fist, when the character of the head of the Seattle Police force, Bishop, burns a stack of books belonging to his late wife, it was the very same thing; It did not make sense, the event meant as motivation for him to set the flames did not, for me, justify the action, and so everything else about him, and all the things which happened because of that, were un-grounded, false, flawed, an unearned pyrotechnics, as it were.

Which sums this book up, rather. I am exhausted by writers auteur-ing like Tarantino; exploiting & exploding for effect rather than exploring and earning emotions. This book has the feel of something annoyingly over-workshopped. One can near hear the other MFAs in the room cooing and ahhhing at all the literary pyrotechnics – or – pyrotechniquing – and by the last third I was skimming through the pages of self-congratulatory, masturbatory describings and ruminatings. More editing. Less posturing. ...more

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May 16, 2016 Kimberly rated it liked it · review of another edition

An interesting book, decently written, but could have been much more. I enjoyed the premise of it and the various points-of-view, but was left wanting as far as character development. I really wish there were half-stars, I think that the last chapter was stunning and made the book.

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