I went through 13 professional reviews, excerpted below. Most reviewers agree that Yapa is excellent at capturing the feel and the chaos of the protests themselves, and most agree that he tends toward overwriting. With — by my categorization — 6 positive, 5 mixed, and 2 negative reviews, they disagree on the value of the sum of the parts.
- On a man who has negotiated multiple loans from the IMF on behalf of his low-income nation: “He had the eyes of a man who has just been told his house burned down with his wife and children inside.”
- On much of my empirical experience: “The more he saw, the less he understood.”
- Ironically, towards the end, a government minister from a low-income country decides he will organize other low-income countries to demand that environmental regulations and labor laws be included in the trade negotiations. My sense is that in fact, low-income governments would prefer fewer regulations than rich countries want to impose.
- There’s one rich exchange where a protestor realizes that the man he is blocking from getting to the WTO meetings is in fact a representative from a low-income country. “We’re out here to protect countries like yours.”
- Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky
- If They Come In The Morning, by Angela Davis
POSITIVE
Truth Dig: “The new year explodes with a fantastic debut novel.” http://m.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/your_heart_is_a_muscle_the_size_of_your_fist_20160115
Rumpus: “Yapa does a heroic job of journeying into the heart of this complex set of events.” http://therumpus.net/2016/01/your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist-by-sunil-yapa/
Independent: “Yapa demonstrates admirable pace and control over what could easily have become an unwieldy mess.” http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist-by-sunil-yapa-book-review-streetwise-tale-set-in-seattles-a6861611.html
Miami Herald: “Marred only slightly by uneven character development, this furiously paced and contrapuntal literary tour-de-force.” http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/books/article54846500.html#storylink=cpy
Publishers Weekly: “A memorable, pulse-pounding literary experience.” http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-316-38653-1
Christian Science Monitor: “Nobody would compare a Seattle protest to a Napoleonic war; but that does not diminish the feat that Yapa achieves with this remarkable, engrossing novel, subjecting history’s police log to the higher law of the writer’s vision.” http://m.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2016/0202/Your-Heart-Is-a-Muscle-the-Size-of-a-Fist-turns-recent-history-into-literature
MIXED
New York Times: “Yapa does well with activism’s breathless rush… But the novel’s indisputably good heart is weakened by a tendency toward overwriting.” http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/books/review/your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist-by-sunil-yapa.html?referer=
The Guardian: “Vibrantly told and jumping from consciousness to consciousness with each chapter, the novel is a crowd scene in 302 pages. … [The] director general of the WTO…monologues on the secret logic of global capitalism with all the subtlety of a cartoon supervillain.” http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/03/your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist-sunil-yapa-review
Star Tribune: “‘Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist’ goes long on theme and language while coming up short on story and characterization, but Sunil Yapa’s voice and ambition leap off the page.” http://m.startribune.com/review-your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist-by-sunil-yapa/364577481/
Sydney Morning Herald: “There are moments of breath-catching prose: blood smelling like “a handful of pennies on a sweaty summer’s day”, a “slat-ribbed stray” but much is muddled as well as Yapa jumps from voice to voice, as the glass shatters and crowbars connect with flesh.” http://m.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist-review-a-social-novel-like-a-protest-20160122-gmboow.html
Irish Times: “Fragmented and fraught as the story it’s trying to tell, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is at its best when asking questions about the effectiveness of public protest. It is the beating heart of the book, the life force that keeps the fiction flowing.” http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist-by-sunil-yapa-review-fragmented-and-fraught-1.2548599
NEGATIVE
NPR: “The concept…is a good one, but the execution is, at best, amateurish.” http://www.npr.org/2016/01/12/462263265/your-heart-is-a-muscle-is-a-florid-ambitious-tale-of-protest
Kirkus: “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.” https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sunil-yapa/your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist/
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