04/01/2007: "THE FIGHTER REVIEW (BIC)"

Hi All,

Here's a review for THE FIGHTER. My thanks to Nancy Wigston, who may be the only woman other than my agent and editors and translator who's ever willingly and of open heart read the book. Then again, she got paid for the review. So perhaps the trend continues. My thanks, as always, to Nancy for the review.

All best, Craig.

Books in Canada:

Equal (sort of) and opposite (certainly) a force to the current “Chick Lit” explosion is its masculine manifestation, which might be labelled Man Lit or Dick Lit (the better rhyme). Whereas the girls need marriage and kids to verify their femaleness, the boys need something else-fighting in Craig Davidson’s book-to verify their manliness. Scratch the surface of the snot (reams of it), blood (ditto), and sore, aching bodies, and you’ll find a romantic substratum of society, driven away from the soul-less consumerism that defines current success. These boys ache to achieve something primal. As one of the main characters, Paul Harris, states to his bewildered parents, “People need to suffer, . . . to feel pain and experience want and get smashed apart if only to fix themselves.” Maybe. Paul’s need leads him to hell, or one of its circles. All this stems from a single bar fight which this cosseted son of Niagara winemakers lost ignominiously. We can imagine his parents’ dismay as they look into the face of their bruised, scarred, steroid-abusing son, once destined to take over the family business. The odd fact is that Paul is genuinely funny when talking to his folks, whereas the underworld of hard-core gyms and illegal bare-knuckle fights offers few laughs. Across the bridge in the infamous Love Canal neighourhood, lives Paul’s opposite, a naturally gifted fighter, seventeen-year-old Robert Tully, descended from a long line of boxing Tullys. But Rob is reluctant to pursue his gift because he sees the whole person (and that person’s wife and child) in every opponent. Both young men start off trying to fit in and please their fathers. Both rebel. When fate inevitably brings them together, Rob knows he will win and therefore revenge his beloved uncle whom Paul’s “lucky punch” has made comatose, but at what cost? This raw but poignant tale is well-constructed and aesthetically pleasing, despite its many intimate close-ups of the human body in extremis.
Nancy Wigston (Books in Canada)