The Longshot, Katie Kitamura

I have very little interest in watching actual fights, but boy do I love reading about them. The recounting of a boxing match is akin to an act of ekphrasis, translating something into words that is fundamentally non-linguistic. The physicality of it, the bodily knowledge, but also the peculiar intimacy between the two fighters — it strains at the limits of what words can do.

But there are few people I’d trust to accomplish such a feat as much as I would Katie Kitamura, and this novel is about as good as it gets. Her lean, muscular minimalism seems perfectly suited to the task: each word does so much. This novel might be my favorite of hers; the slow build of suspense is riveting, and then there’s the incredible way that it makes you understand the artistry, the aesthetics of a fight, but also the danger. The descriptions of bodily sensation are a marvel; for instance, the way fear floods your body, and especially your perception, as if you’d been clapped with blinders. Like the most dazzling examples of ekphrasis, the prose signals the bravura of its own accomplishment by reminding you that bodily experience produces its own complex wisdom. Getting knocked out teaches you something; it changes you in ways that are hard to explain.

But the most dazzling thing about the novel is the way it moves in and out of the minds of its two protagonists, a finely-tuned FID that is brilliantly subtle and mostly seamless, except for the occasional odd work that makes you stop and notice. It’s astonishing, actually, because it’s only when you haul yourself out of the book, flip back to some random page and look at it again that you realize how slippery the perspective is.

This is a book to read in one, maybe two sittings — clear your afternoon and get a copy. It’s a masterpiece.