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hannahouston's review
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
jmiae's review
3.0
What is the appeal of professional fighting, specifically for the fighters? Why do they put their bodies through that kind of abuse and risk serious brain damage, or even death?
The fascinating thing about The Longshot is I often felt that Cal and Riley, respectively the fighter and the manager, were asking themselves the same questions or at least variations of them. This is written so tightly that there is little room for sentimentality and yet the rawness of the prose describing the inner thoughts of both main characters, followed by intense physicality of the story's climax, was actually quite an emotional experience.
I have two interpretations of this book:
One: In the end, it seems that if you do something long enough you forget why you were doing it but you keep doing it anyway because you don't know what else you can do. You just get swept up in the current of time.
Two: the famous menopause monologue from the fabulous second season of Fleabag comes to mind:
"Women are born with pain built in. It's our physical destiny. Period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. Men don't. They have to seek it out.
They invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we also do very well on our own. And then they create wars, so they can feel things and touch each other, and when there aren't any wars they can play rugby."
Or in this case, they get into mixed martial arts.
The fascinating thing about The Longshot is I often felt that Cal and Riley, respectively the fighter and the manager, were asking themselves the same questions or at least variations of them. This is written so tightly that there is little room for sentimentality and yet the rawness of the prose describing the inner thoughts of both main characters, followed by intense physicality of the story's climax, was actually quite an emotional experience.
I have two interpretations of this book:
One: In the end, it seems that if you do something long enough you forget why you were doing it but you keep doing it anyway because you don't know what else you can do. You just get swept up in the current of time.
Two: the famous menopause monologue from the fabulous second season of Fleabag comes to mind:
"Women are born with pain built in. It's our physical destiny. Period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. Men don't. They have to seek it out.
They invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we also do very well on our own. And then they create wars, so they can feel things and touch each other, and when there aren't any wars they can play rugby."
Or in this case, they get into mixed martial arts.
scottsltr's review
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
aoutrance's review against another edition
4.0
For the POPSUGAR challenge "author with the same first or last name as you". It was a more effort than I thought it would be to find a title for this one! Not because my first name is uncommon by any means, but it seemed like such a cop-out to just blindly point at any one of dozen contemporary romance novels and go (and no power on Earth was going to make me read Katie Pavlich's drek). So I tirelessly trawled through three whole pages of results before finding something appealing: Katie Kitamura's The Longshot.
Since falling ass over tea kettle for ice hockey, sports writing and fiction has been on my radar a lot more often. This novel is about the three days that lead up to an MMA rematch between our lead character Cal and the legendary Rivera, with Cal's trainer Riley as guide through their fraught history.
The dialogue in this is such hetero dude speak. Simple structures, varying emotional tone even if the words are the same over and over. A lot of things said between the lines because the characters can't seem to bring themselves to say it aloud.
Riley scouted Cal out of high school wrestling, trained him and his rise was meteoric - until it wasn't. A typical sports story - this rematch with a champion fighter is a redemption of sorts. There's fear, doubt and worry all leading up to the final culmination of the fight, which is left fairly ambiguous.Cal doesn't win, which almost seemed so obvious that I thought Kitamura was going to do the obvious just to fuck with us, but Cal also may or may not live through the beating he put himself through just not to be a KO. Regardless of which of if he lives or dies, he'll definitely never fight professionally again.
Since falling ass over tea kettle for ice hockey, sports writing and fiction has been on my radar a lot more often. This novel is about the three days that lead up to an MMA rematch between our lead character Cal and the legendary Rivera, with Cal's trainer Riley as guide through their fraught history.
The dialogue in this is such hetero dude speak. Simple structures, varying emotional tone even if the words are the same over and over. A lot of things said between the lines because the characters can't seem to bring themselves to say it aloud.
Riley scouted Cal out of high school wrestling, trained him and his rise was meteoric - until it wasn't. A typical sports story - this rematch with a champion fighter is a redemption of sorts. There's fear, doubt and worry all leading up to the final culmination of the fight, which is left fairly ambiguous.
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