Fear & Yoga in New Jersey

At the center of Debra Galant's new novel is Nina Gettleman-Summer, a stressed-out New Jersey yoga teacher. Nina should be calmly guiding her high powered students through their savasanas and their chakras . Instead she is worried about... everything: her new meditation fountain overflowed resulting in a dangerous mess that caused one of her more litigious students to slip and fall; her husband Michael's job as Newark Airport's meteorologist was outsourced to the Phillipines, and a hurricane is bearing down on her parents’ home in Florida. The last thing Nina needs is her suspicious mother Belle around, wailing about the weather and asking questions about Michael's job. To complicate matters, her teenage son Adam is showing a sudden interest in having a Bar Mitzvah – even though Nina, never a fan of her Jewish heritage, signed the family up at the local Unitarian Church. Which brings us to the heart of this very funny book. Nina's put her faith in feng shui and crystals while her husband passes the time chatting with the local Jehovah's Witnesses and Adam plots his religious coming of age, which he believes will net him a real life pot of gold. The Gettleman-Summers are poised for an awakening which, when it arrives, is deftly portrayed in Galant's classic screwball style.

Click on any of the following reviews and interviews.

Debra Galant continues to excel as a suburban satirist with the observational chops of a skilled reporter. New Jersey Monthly  
Click here to hear Debra's interview with Andrew Meyer on WBGO

WBGO

 
Deftly satirizes the local culture, which Galant describes as being rich with "lots of yoga, lots of sushi, lots of Thai, lots of Priuses." Montclair Times  
Debra Galant was concerned that her new novel, Fear and Yoga in New Jersey, might portray certain segments of the Jewish community in a poor light. She needn't have worried. Her book puts lots of groups in such a viewpoint. New Jersey Jewish News  
Galant’s picture of a family at the peak of an existential crisis is fully realized...this portrait is painted with humor, grace and in a prose style that charges full steam ahead with manic glee. Op Ed News  
Click here to hear Debra's interview on the Brian Lehrer Show March 31, 2007. Brian Lehrer Show WNYC  
"For Galant, proof that she had truly arrived came when Watchung Booksellers in Montclair placed her new novel in a display next to Phillip Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning 'American Pastoral.'" Glen Ridge Voice  
"Say what you want, but Galant knows her subject matter." The Record  
Those who might think that life in the New Jersey suburbs is mundane and humdrum have never visited the ones that exist in Galant's imagination. Booklist  
"Funny situations and good one-liners." Associated Press  
"Galant, whose first novel, Rattled, proved that she had a talent for zany suburban social satire, strikes again." Library Journal   Library Journal
"In her second genial lampoon of New Jersey life, Galant (Rattled, 2006) takes aim at new-age suburbanites." Kirkus   Kirkus
"Galant has a lock on upper-middle–class suburban skewerings and makes ribald fun of overbearing Jewish mothers." Publishers Weekly   Publishers Weekly
Purchasing

Click on any of the following icons to purchase FEAR AND YOGA IN NEW JERSEY.

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