More Than Just A Hobby: Local Novelist Hones His Craft

Ask Eastchester resident Jeffrey Onorato what he does for a living, and he’ll tell you that he’s in the consulting business.

Ask him what he is passionate about, and he’ll tell you something very different.

Onorato – who for the last five years has lived in Eastchester with his wife and two small children – refers to himself as a  “hobby novelist,” although all it takes is half-and-hour or so of listening to him speak to realize that this “hobby” of his is maybe a bit more than just that. 

Earlier this month, Onorato’s debut novel, The SIN of Addison Hall, received an Honorable Mention at the 2011 Hollywood Book Festival, something he said offered him a significant sense of validation, not only because of what he describes as the solitary nature of the act of writing, but also because of the book’s subject matter and genre – which he will be the first to admit is not for everyone.

“It’s like Guinness beer,” Onorato said. “The opinions are not in the middle of the road. You either love it or hate it. People who don’t like Orwell or don’t like Vonnegut or find Nineteen Eighty-Four to be too bleak, the book’s not going to resonate with them. The whole idea was to keep true to the form.”

The book, first published in August of 2009 by Bryant Park Press, is set in a futuristic world where social status is determined solely by outside appearance and looks. Beautiful people enjoy elite-status while unattractive people live as second-class citizens. The work is a comment on societal values and insecurities, the dangers of materialism, human nature and political history. It is also largely based on the “underpinnings of the Holocaust,” says Onorato, and even includes direct excerpts from Hitler’s Mein Kampf and speeches from Goebbels. The novel is set in Poland (although Ornorato uses anagrams for his place names), and according to him is historically and geographically accurate.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the work has caused somewhat of a controversy among its readers, producing reactions ranging from pure disgust to pure appreciation. One reader told Onorato that she stopped using whitening strips for her teeth after reading it. Another accused him of being an anti-Semite.

“It’s a really misunderstood novel,” Onorato said. “I had no idea the controversy that it would cause, but I guess I should have expected it." 

To think that Onorato writes about these things from afar, however, is clearly to be mistaken. For starters, he has an incredible eye for detail, as well as a fascination for anything to do with what he calls “the human element of history.”

Futhermore, Onorato has witnessed first hand the lasting effects the truly horrific events in history can have on an individual and family. His wife’s family, of Russian and Jewish decent, was directly involved in the Holocaust, and the two of them traveled to Auschwitz in 2003 on what he called a “delayed honeymoon” he claims gave him a tremendous amount of inspiration.

Lastly – and this is something Onorato wants you to know – The SIN of Addison Hall was not written on a whim, but is the end product of a strenuous nine-year writing and editing process, during which he says he rewrote the novel six different times.

“I’m not a linear writer,” said Onorato, who wrote a lot of the novel in Mickey Spillane’s in Eastchester and in the Starbucks at the Tuckahoe train station. “I may ruminate over a word for all of two or three days. A lot of times I can be doing stuff but the book is still kicking around. To me the process of writing is one of constant re-writing. It’s like painting the George Washington Bridge. By the time you get to the end of it you have to start painting the other way again. You never know when to let go of it. That’s the hardest part for me.”

Onorato’s novel is much more than just historical allegory, however. On a more basic level, and driven by personable and witty characters, it represents a deep concern within the “hobby novelist” about the direction he believes our society is going in, one he sees as becoming more and more enthralled with everything material, superficial and unnatural.

“I don’t want to say I’m a pessimist, but I do think I have a jaundice eye when it comes to looking at these things,” he said. “I think that as a country we are moving away from our spiritual roots, and as we do that we’re going to look to replace that vacuum with other things. People need meaning somewhere in life, so if we’re not going to find in either traditional or non-traditional spirituality, we’re going to find it in other places, and I’m very skeptical that we’ll be able to turn that around. The book kind of warns about that.”

For fans of Onorato’s first work, the good news is that more is on its way. He is scheduled to release a sequel to The SIN of Addison Hall early next year, and has already begun working on a third book that will continue the series. Perhaps most importantly, and despite his unique and to some somewhat off-putting outlook on the world around him, Onorato has won over perhaps the most important person in his writing “career,” his publicist.

“To get published today is almost impossible, particularly in fiction,” said Editor-In-Chief at Bryant Park Press Susan Hynes. “I would say nine times of out 10 a publisher refuses a manuscript and they’re right. There are some reasons why Jeff has been successful. He has many layers to his writing. One on level it’s just pure fantasy, at another level it’s the dark site, and underneath that, if you peel that away, it’s full of beauty and hope and wonderful lessons to take away. And his second book is the same way. We’re very excited about it.”

No matter how many more works Onorato gets published in the future, one thing you can be quite sure about is that he’ll keep writing in the same style and with the same enthusiasm that got him here, meaning he probably won’t be coming out with his first romance novel anytime soon.

“I like books that end badly,” Onorato said. “Orwell had a great quote: ‘I want to write novels that are very descriptive but end badly.’ I love that description.”