Leave Myself Behind

Praise for Leave Myself Behind:
 
 “Since The Catcher in the Rye, authors have been hoping to create the next Holden Caulfield and critics have hoped to crown a character with that distinction. The latest temptation for comparison is surely Leave Myself Behind. Bart Yates' main character and narrator, Noah York, has Caulfield-style teenage authenticity. Noah’s voice is more than just honest or original; it’s real…This isn’t just a novel about a boy dealing with discrimination and fighting for acceptance… We don’t see Noah as simply a gay teen or fatherless child. We see him as a character dealing with life. That’s what makes Leave Myself Behind so great.” —The Plain Dealer

"Noah York is seventeen, but don't let his age fool you. 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. A gripping tale of buried secrets and emerging attractions, but more than that, a story of the familial ties that bind as they grow stronger and pull apart." —Brian Malloy, author of After Francesco

“Tart-tongued and appealing, young Noah York is living through the worst and best three months of his life. In Bart Yates’ gripping debut novel, Noah spins a tale that is by turns refreshingly strange and poignantly familiar. What he discovers—about the haunted and haunting past, the always vexed relations between parents and children, the bittersweet mysteries of love—will shock and surprise and move you.” —Paul Russell, author of War Against The Animals

“Yates effectively captures the honest, sometimes silly, often tender interactions between his fragile characters.” —Booklist

“With Leave Myself Behind, Bart Yates gives us both the laugh-out-loud and refreshingly sincere coming-of-age story we’ve been missing all these years.” —Instinct Magazine

“It’s not an easy task these days to come up with a fresh and original gay coming-of-age and coming-out story. Give Bart Yates credit; he takes the challenge and relies on other narrative pulls to launch his tale of how his narrator a smart and smart-alecky artist with Holden Caulfield-like skepticism about the world, comes to self-knowledge about his own sexuality, society’s (especially his high school’s) way of dealing with it . . . and most importantly, how his love for the boy next door develops. Yates is an author to watch and earns an ‘A'." —Frontiers

“The writing is fresh and the stories intriguing.” —Echo Magazine

“An effervescently effective addition to the genre—Yates, in his first novel, has injected juicy originality into the coming-of-age fable.” —The Front Page (Raleigh, North Carolina)