Garden State highlighted in latest 'Galant effort'
BY TERRENCE MCDONALD
Debra Galant has made it.
It's not just that Galant, a former New York Times columnist, runs a popular
local Web site, Baristanet, or that St. Martin's Press has just released her
second novel, "Fear and Yoga in New Jersey."
No, 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." Galant, a Roth fan, was
floored.
"I think I even took a picture of it," she said.
Though she grew up in northern Virginia, Galant, 52, is nothing if not
Jersey-centric. Her bi-weekly Times column, which she stopped writing in
2000, focused exclusively on New Jersey, while Baristanet features news and
gossip about Bloomfield, Glen Ridge and Montclair. Both of her books
("Rattled" was released in 2006) take place right here in the Garden State.
New Jersey is in the middle of a pop culture renaissance, Galant said,
citing Roth's novels, the film "Garden State" and "The Sopranos." She said
that is one of the reasons she set "Fear and Yoga" not just in New Jersey,
but in a very thinly disguised Montclair (the township is never named).
"I'm a real believer in grounding your books in a real place, as opposed to
just the suburbs," she said over coffee at Starbucks on Bloomfield Avenue.
The gently satirical "Fear and Yoga" focuses on the Summer family. Nina, the
mother, is a yoga instructor who eats organic food and researches feng shui.
Her husband Michael, a meteorologist, discovers his job at Newark
International Airport has been downsized to The Philippines, while Adam,
their son, secretly craves an elaborate bar mitzvah.
In the course of one week, the Summers contend with a hurricane, a visit
from Nina's parents and aggressive Homeland Security agents.
Galant, a Glen Ridge resident since 1989 and mother of two, said the book
was originally to be Adam's story, though she decided early on she did not
want to write a young adult novel. "Fear and Yoga" concentrates on all three
members of the Summer family (and on Nina's overbearing mother, visiting
from Florida). But the primary focus is Nina, whose life is upended when she
discovers her yoga studio may be tainted by the bad spirits of its previous
occupant.
Nina, whose frenzy to cleanse her yoga studio of bad spirits leads to a
frantic trip to Chinatown, was inspired by a number of people, Galant said,
women who are "sort of self-righteously politically correct and environmentally
environmentally perfect, who are unaware of their own imperfections and
their own annoying sides."She added: "I think some women will relate to aspects of it and others will think, 'Oh, God, that's my sister-in-law!' And for them it will be extra fun."
Galant's fans will find the same kind of irreverence in "Fear and Yoga" that
they do on Baristanet, which she launched in 2004 after hearing Jeff Jarvis,
a journalism professor at City University of New York, expound on the
importance of hyper-local news.
It started as a project for her and Carl Bergmanson, the former Glen Ridge
mayor. Four years later, Baristanet has a number of contributors and garners
9,000 hits a day, Galant said. Though she said she occasionally hears
complaints from readers and advertisers about the content, she believes the
site's breezy, chatty tone has gone over well.
When she began working on "Rattled," Galant said she was worried she would
be unable to transition from writing short-form journalistic pieces to a
long-form novel.
"I think, like most journalists, I didn't think I could make things up," she
said. "That was the first hurdle."
To overcome this obstacle, she studied with Alice Dark, a writer who teaches
in her Montclair home. By the end of the first class in plot, Galant said,
she was confident she had what it took to finish a novel.
Galant is already at work on a third book, "Cars from a Marriage," which she
anticipates will be out by 2010. It will tell the story of a relationship
entirely through the couple's car trips, alternating between the woman's
point of view and the man's. Though it will have comic aspects, Galant said
it may feature a style more literary than her first two efforts.
"I'm hoping I have a chance to develop and grow as a writer," she said.
Galant plans to read from "Fear and Yoga" and sign copies at Temple Ner
Tamid in Bloomfield on Sunday, April 13 at 3 p.m.
March 27, 2008
