Packing a punch

A BLOW TO THE HEART
by Marcel Theroux
Faber £10.99 pp216

Do novels about pugilism have to follow certain patterns? Reading these two might make one think so. The craft and graft required to succeed, the sleazy gangsters that surround the sport, the primitive simplicity of the final showdown — such typical features of the boxing world generate narratives of squalor and heroism, aspiration and betrayal, devastation and resistance.

FX Toole, who died in 2002, was a professional trainer and corner-man who started writing fiction in his sixties. His sizzling collection Rope Burns, hardly noticed in this country, contained the story Million Dollar Baby, which Clint Eastwood turned into an Oscar-winning film. His only novel, Pound for Pound, remained unfinished at his death. Now completed by other hands, it matches the symmetry of its title by recounting, in alternating sequences, the ultimately linked stories of a despairing old man and an aspiring young one.

Dan Cooley is a famous Los Angeles boxing trainer who has lost his wife and children. His only surviving relative is his 11- year-old grandson, who promises to be a fine athlete. When, in a horrifying episode, the boy is killed in a traffic accident, Dan succumbs first to loss of faith, then murderous hatred of the guilty driver, and later suicidal remorse when he realises she was innocent.

“Chicky” Garza, a Mexican born in Texas, is a brilliantly gifted young boxer who has everything except the finer skills necessary to become a great champion. His grandfather, Eloy, a former fighter now secretly addicted to morphine, has helped him escape the ghetto but cannot protect him from bent promoters or train him to the highest level. Eventually, Eloy pushes the boy towards Los Angeles and Dan Cooley, without telling him he once met Dan in the ring. The significance of Dan and Eloy’s fight emerges only towards the end, but it’s obvious early that Chicky needs Dan and Dan needs Chicky — one for survival as a boxer, the other simply for survival.

Transcending adversity is also important in Marcel Theroux’s A Blow to the Heart, which similarly takes off from a shocking bereavement. Daisy is a London journalist aged 30, happily married and recently pregnant. She sees her husband nip out to fetch the papers, and next encounters him in the morgue, unmarked except for a tiny hole in his chest. A teenage junkie, caught vandalising cars, has stabbed him with a Phillips screwdriver. The killer, Joel Heath, gets two years for manslaughter. Daisy loses her baby and her will to live. What unfreezes her is her subsequent discovery that Heath is making a career as a boxer. Obsessed, she starts attending his matches, hatching the notion of finding a fighter who can beat him to a pulp.

Theroux’s novel is self-conscious and literary while Toole’s is visceral and vernacular. Despite this, their narratives are curiously similar. Although the details vary, both present white protagonists who suffer the loss of a loved one. Each sinks into depression, plots violent vengeance, but gradually (with the help of a black sidekick) achieves redemption by nurturing a boxer. Both books feature fighters blinded in one eye due to gloves having padding illegally removed. Both also feature sign language, villains ruined by cocaine, and climactic fights against dirty opponents — Cyrus “Psycho” Sykes in Toole, Chris “Kinky” Panic in Theroux. But although the surface similarities are remarkable, the deeper resemblances seem to flow from the primal nature of boxing.

Toole’s novel is the product of a fight-game insider, Theroux’s appears to be more researched, but both show how searingly traditional themes can be revivified.

Available at Sunday Times Books First prices of £10.80 (Toole) and £9.89 (including p&p) on 0870 165 8585