Bart Yates – författare

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--their angry, abusive father and the tragic death of their mother--and finally, 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. "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 and makes it readable. . .you can''t put it down." --Edge Magazine

“Noah’s voice is more than just honest or original; it’s real.” --The Plain DealerTHE 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.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.“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.” --Brian Malloy, author of The Year of Ice

When his difficult mother is diagnosed with ALS, a sharp-witted yet sensitive artist reluctantly returns to his New Hampshire hometown – and all the ghosts he left behind. Fans of Andrew Sean Greer, Bryan Washington, and Jonathan Tropper will adore this outrageously funny, deeply touching, buoyant novel from the award-winning author of Leave Myself Behind. 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 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.