FICTION

Synopsis of Without Yes, Without No

This is a synopsis of my novel manuscript, Without Yes, Without No. I would appreciate any feedback. Does this sound like something you would be interested in reading?

Henry wakes to his wife, Sophia, showering and wanders around his home until she’s out of the shower. After they eat breakfast, Sophia drops Henry off at a Starbucks so he can ostensibly work on a novel, then she goes to work at the University, where she teaches philosophy. Henry is unemployed because he was caught moving money around at the bank he worked at in Birmingham, AL, which led to his arrest and being banned from getting online. At the Starbucks, Henry entertains himself by people-watching, talking to people, and lying. In particular, he lies to two businessmen who were meeting each other at the Starbucks — he pretends to be them, works out a great business deal, then disappears during the time he tells each of them to return. During the time he is gone, he has an affair with a woman — on his wife’s recommendation — and on his way back to the Starbucks, he saves a child’s life and lies to the parents, who are white supremacists, about being a Jew.

In the meantime, the woman he’s having an affair with, Bera, is bored at home bacause her husband, David, is a fundamentalist and a chauvanist, insisting she be a stay-at-home wife and mother. Their family dynamics are developed, and in the end, Bera thinks she’s on the path to no longer needing Henry in her life. While Henry is at Starbucks and visitng Bera, David is busy at work staving off the advances of a secretary and trying to get some work done, while one of his salesmen is trying to work out a business deal at Starbucks. This same salesman, George, is one of the salesmen Henry pretends to be, and when George and the other salesman figure out what happened, George gets so upset he has a heart attack and dies.

Throughout his time at the Starbucks, Henry is people-watching, which prompts him to think about a number of things throughout the day. He talks to an African-American man about geneaology, and while all of this is happening, there is a small acting troupe performing what they call cafe plays, though nobody there knows about it until they are finished with their performances.

Woven into this is a short story about the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears. Two brothers separate from the group at two different times — one to Kentucky, the other to Arkansas — becoming the ancestors of Henry and the African-American man he talks to at the cafe, respectively.

Though most of the novel takes place during a single day, there are several flashbacks to his past in Kentucky and Birmingham, AL. We learn about how Henry and Sophia met, and the relationship they had with another woman, who Henry has a one-night affair with in Mississippi on her wedding night. She is the ex-wife of a man who Henry falsely implicates as an accomplice in his embezzelment of money from the bank where they both work. Henry justifies it on the basis of the man being terrible to his wife.

The novel ends with Sophia picking Henry up and taking him home. They spend the evening chatting with each other, and Sophia tells Henry that their friend/ex-girlfriend is in town and that they ought to go visit her at her hotel.