At the beginning of this book the reader is told "My mother had two placentas, and I was living off both of them." The fact that Stephen Florida’s twin brother died in the womb offers the first intimation that here is a person whose life must have started with a pre-conscious awareness of loss. Then, orphaned at fourteen when his parents died in a car crash, going to live with his grandmother who died a few years later when he was at college, he was faced not only with more losses but also with a growing belief that he needed to rely solely on himself for survival. A good wrestler, he had promised himself, and his grandmother, that he would win the Division IV NCAA championship in his 133lb weight class – and he prides himself on never making a promise he doesn’t keep. When the story starts he is a senior in a small college in North Dakota, obsessed with attaining his goal, whatever the personal physical, emotional and psychological consequences. Just as he feels he is in sight of achieving his goal, he suffers a knee injury which requires an operation; not only does this interrupt his training schedule but it also threatens his ultimate goal. As a result, any emotional stability he may have possessed begins to seriously unravel. From the opening sentence of this powerful novel I felt immediately drawn into Stephen’s world and his intense, obsessional ambition. There were times when his stream of consciousness about the minutiae of his training schedule, his exercise routine, his highly restrictive diet, the amount of sleep he needed and the restrictions on his sex-life, made me feel as though I was occupying a space inside his head, almost viscerally experiencing the pressure of his ambitions, as well as his despair when it appeared that injury would rob him of his ultimate goal. If wrestling is his identity, what is he if he can no longer wrestle? In fact, who is Stephen Florida anyway because this isn’t his real name; his real name is Stephen Forster but the letter offering him a wrestling scholarship was addressed to Stephen Florida, a mistake which he chose not to correct. As all his energies are focused on competing and winning, friendships are difficult for Stephen because they represent a diversion from, and threat to, his ultimate ambition. His only friend on the team is Linus, a freshman competing in a different weight class and therefore not in direct competition with him. However, when he is injured he feels a need to sabotage this relationship because he is unable to tolerate what he now perceives as an imbalance in their friendship. He does have a brief relationship with Mary Beth, a lively, funny, socially confident artist who seems to be able to tolerate his obsessions and his lack of social graces. Although it becomes clear that his feelings for her are intense and genuine, he cannot reconcile a developing relationship with her with his need to compete, to be the best wrestler in his class. So, loneliness becomes the flipside of his obsessional competitiveness but, rather than allowing himself to feel the full pain of this, he comes to regard his social isolation as a source of power and pride. Some of the saddest moments in this story were when his reflections on his feelings for Mary Beth revealed the inner struggles he was experiencing. This was a young man who could be harsh and brutal, liable to explosive rages and delusional beliefs and yet, one who could also be tender, thoughtful and caring. I also felt very moved by his exploration of his muddled feelings about the intensely close physical encounters with other wrestlers and his reflections/fears on the realisation that outsiders could, and did, label these as homeo-erotic. With zero interest in (not to say antipathy towards!) wrestling, I think it’s true to say that, without the recommendation of two people whose opinions I trust, I would not have been drawn towards this novel – what a thought-provoking experience I could so easily have missed! One of the things which amazed me as my reading progressed was that, rather than continuing to skip through the details of the wrestling matches, by the final bouts I found myself as obsessed as Stephen with the blow by blow progress of them! Maybe another reason I came to embrace this flawed character was his enjoyment of Miles Davis’s album “Sketches of Spain” – a favourite of mine since the 1960s! I found myself surprised by how much I came to care for this disturbed, obsessional and lonely young man. I think this is a real tribute to the way in which the author gradually revealed a flawed, yet charismatic character, one who demonstrated how a single-minded, self-denying obsession, which necessarily excludes the development of any other interests, can so easily become self-destructive. This is a novel which centres on the dangers of obsessional behaviour and emotional fragility. For Stephen the obsession was with wrestling but part of the power of this story is the fact that this is a danger with any single-minded goal: once it has been achieved what comes next? There is, therefore, a universality about the story which would make it an ideal choice for reading groups. In conclusion, I think this is a wonderful story, one which is made even more remarkable by the fact that it is debut novel; with huge empathy, Gabe Habash has created a character with a unique, distinct and truly memorable voice.