Read This: The Fighter
Fiction by Craig Davidson (Viking Press)
REVIEW BY Holland Gidney
In his fascinating and highly detailed description of the shady, underground world of bare-knuckle boxing, Craig Davidson shows he’s got the writing chops to take on the heavyweights of CanLit—even if the violent and sometimes unsettling subject matter may have potential fans jumping out of the ring before he even throws a punch.
The Fighter is a bit of a brutal read, and Davidson’s graphic descriptions are not for the queasy. But get past the violence (none of it gratuitous) and you’ll realize that it’s the blood, grit and determination that make this story real, and a gripping read.
Not unexpectedly, it’s a novel full of conflict: there’s Working-Class Americans vs. Moneyed Canadians; Fathers vs. Sons; and Natural Talent vs. Guts. But it’s no rags-to-riches, overcoming-adversity story. As in boxing, even though someone will be declared “the winner,” everyone who enters the ring takes a beating as sons rebel against the lives their fathers have prescribed for them.
