Blog Tour! - The Fighter by Michael Farris Smith - Blog Tour!

I have to admit to having a bit of a thing for novels, television and films set in the American Deep South. There’s a long litany of fine fiction coming from the region - in television we have True Detective (the first series, obviously); in cinema we have Hell or High Water,  just the latest in the genre, there are many other examples I could give; while on the written page we have novels by the likes of John Stonehouse, Jedidiah Ayres and Donald Ray Pollock, to name just a few. Michael Farris Smith’s novel, The Fighter, joins this August company.

Jack Boucher (pronounced Boo-shay) is a fighter on his last legs. He’s suffered one two many punches, knees and elbows and and has suffered for it; there are yawing gaps in his memory and he needs to keep a notebook at all times to record the names of people he’s met, whether they are friend or foe. He’s addicted to painkillers, his foster mother - the only person he ever loved - is in a nursing home with late stage Alzheimers, the house she left Jack now in hoc to the banks. Worse still, he’s in debt up to his eyeballs to Big Momma Sweet, who runs all the rackets and who you don’t want to cross. 

Luck is not something which stays with Jack for very long, so when he wins enough money at a casino to settle his debt with Big Momma Sweet and maybe pay off the banks, it’s little surprise that things go awry. Big Momma Sweet has put a bounty out on Jack’s head and he’s waylaid. I wish to avoid spoilers, but needless to say he loses the money and thus is left in an unenviable position. Unable to cover his debts, his only hope looks to be a return to the fighting pits, but will his battered body and damaged brain hold out?

This is raw and visceral writing, the author bringing to life Jack’s desperation. I’ve never been to the Deep South, but reading this book, the description, the atmosphere, I really had a feel for a region that’s on it’s knees - economic decline and poverty having ravaged the land. In many ways the two - Jack Bouchet and the Mississippi Delta - complement each other, both two sides of the same coin, certainly, Jack is a product of his environment. The other characters in the novel are equally vividly drawn, especially Big Momma Sweet, who while occupying relatively little space on the page, is larger than life and someone I won’t forget.

At just 223 pages, The Fighter is not a long novel, but Michael Farris Smith is such a gifted writer that he doesn’t need more to tell his tale. Powerfully written and compelling in its intensity, this is not a novel to be missed.

5 out of 5 stars