Drexler rises from her corner, ready to fight again!
A wild ride through the underground lives of female wrestlers in early 1970s New York.
One day, Rosa—a deliberate naif, on her own since she was 15 and wandering through New York City with all her belongings in a straw bag—is depressed. She decides to wait out the “unhip” afternoon at the movies, but midway through the picture feels a hand on her thigh. This is Rosa’s introduction to Paul Partch—itinerant art critic, fetishist of large, powerful women, ardent wrestling fan—who becomes her midafternoon lover, then her love. Eventually, however, Paul’s need to assert dominance over Rosa in a fantasy version of their relationship, because, as he reasons, “ownership belongs to the creator,” leads him to finagle her introduction to Bobby Fox, the big boss of a veritable stable of traveling lady wrestlers. Rosa, who recognizes Paul’s essentially manipulative nature, decides to go along with the wrestling idea “for kicks” and enters into a complex underworld filled with characters like Lee Darling, the Beautiful Boomerang, a wrestling world washout who rides with the American Legion on the side; Tommy J. Jukes, whose cruel, patriarchal relationship with her female lover repulses Rosa; and Shorty, a loquacious “right-hand man” with dwarfism whose wife and child were “smashed to smithereens” in a car accident years before. These characters, and many more, objectify, oppress, counsel, and care for Rosa, even as Paul, oscillating between sexualized glee at her success and insecurity at her growing distance, tries to pull her back under his dominion. While at times the book shows its age—’70s-era freak show ableism of the Tom Robbins variety rides a gleeful sidecar to the main plot—the buoyant quality of Rosa’s nature, her absolute certainty of her right to her own perspective, and her open embrace of a world that is sometimes actively trying to harm her go a long way toward recentering the reader’s attention to the novel’s real goal: a radical assertion of the power inherent in Rosa, and the rest of us, to defend the identity we’ve chosen to live. The result is a book that is both epic in its energy and intimate in its attention; a much-needed reminder of the enduring, and transformative, power of the weird.
Drexler rises from her corner, ready to fight again!Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781965028025
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Hagfish
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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