The Fair Fight

I just loved 'The Fair Fight'. I was surprised that I did as it was a friend's Book Club pick but the book was fabulous! It starts a little slowly but picks up the pace as the story gets involved, the characters are compelling, and by the end you can not put this book down. I had family in over the Thanksgiving Holiday; and all I wanted to do was finish this book to see how the characters lives turned out. I would highly recommend this to anyone. Do not let the almost 500 pages deter you. The book is fast paced and can be finished fairly quickly. I will be looking for more books by Anna Freeman!

One of the best historical novels that I've read in a long time, 'The Fair Fight' is an excellent and highly original work. It's set in late 18th-century England, and revolves around the daughter of a madam who becomes a female boxer (she fights only men, however). There's a lot more to the story than that, however. The novel is divided into sections told by different characters. The first is Ruth, the boxer, who describes her life in "the convent," her jealousy of her beautiful sister, her entry into the ring, and her "marriage." The second narrator is George Bowden, a handsome young man with limited prospects who is in love with more than one person. He lives off Perry Sinclair, a wealthy heir and old school chum; they are friends with Granville Dryer, a gambler who is Ruth's sponsor and her sister's "fancy man." Then there is a third narrator, Charlotte Sinclair, Perry's sad, repressed sister, a former beauty who survived the pox that killed her parents, sister, and another brother, but was left horribly scarred. I love the individual voices of the characters and the way their lives keep crossing. It's a hard one to put down!

You are transported to the turn of the century in the beginning of the 1700s. It is a time when the world was for the few, and the very few. A woman becomes a pugilist to rise above her dismal circumstances. Another woman of privilege struggles to extricate herself from the inherent subordination permeating a world of male supremacy. She becomes outrageous in order to assert her humanity. In a world dominated by the propertied classes, the men are indolent and amoral, and the hierarchy is virtually stratified. This is a book about rebellion against this social calsification. It is brilliantly executed and completely compelling.Phillip Rohlin

This novel was great. It was odd, unusual, fascinating, and unique. Wonderful characters!!! The novel included boxing, whores, ladies, gamblers, deceivers, drunks, liars, love, class conflicts, great friendships, betrayals, and much more. The characters were riveting with in depth understanding of each. Loved both male and female characters for their strengths and weaknesses. The plot revolves around a female boxer who was born in a brothel. Highly, highly recommended!!!!! This book deserves an A++++++++++

The Fair Fight pulls you into the story right away and doesn't let go. The story is a page turner.

A great period piece when life was either full of riches for the some or dirt cheap. This twain meets in this world of gambling ruthless nobleman and the men they train and wage in as bare knuckle boxers. Did I say men? One correction is Ruth who takes to boxing to escape the dreary life at her mother's bawdy house. She meets Charlotte Dryer, the wife of Ruth's husband and escaped also into the world of pugilism and her cruel husband. The book is full of colorful but yet depressing characters in a cruel world both from the rich and poor. I particularly liked the way the book is broken up into chapters highlighting the characters. Most heartening is Ruth and Charlotte. But you'll enjoy all the characters, good and wicked.

At 469 pages, this book comes in the heavyweight division. It is set in London in the early 19th century and like a whole bunch of recent novels, it examines the lives of women at the bottom rung of a society which is particularly cruel and unforgiving to the poor. Much of it is set in a brothel. There seems to be a trend among mainly but not exclusively women historical novelists to provide a counter narrative to the world pictured by Jane Austen and her many "romance novelist" imitators which are set at the same time. I think that is healthy. We need that corrective-- yet these books can be a tough sled. The squalor depicted in real and unrelenting and one can have too much of it.The main protagonist, Ruth, is one of two sisters who grow up in a brothel in the port city of Bristol, their mother being the heartless madam. Her older sister, Dora, is comely and soon turning tricks. But Ruth is homely. However she discovers a taste and talent for bare knuckle boxing which means that she too has an economic value. The two trades -- fighting and f------ing, are depicted as different aspects of essentially the same profession, namely the grinding exploitation of women's bodies for profit. Both involve punishing and using up the bodies of the two sisters. Both are equally brutal.We are also introduced to Charlotte, born at a higher social station but marred by smallpox. Her economic prospects are also straightened and she has to deal with a wastrel brother who has power over her simply because he is a man. She too finds her way to fighting as a path to liberation.The setup is promising and the writing and characters are interesting - but I still found it hard to get absorbed into this novel. Maybe it was more my fault than that of the author who asked of me more than I was able to deliver in terms of my attention and commitment. But I was never caught up in the story. I never caught myself wondering what might happen next. I never thought about the book at times when I wasn't reading it. I began to resent the sheer length, which didn't to me justify the issues being examined or the story being told. I don't want to put anyone off this book because I do think it's a professional piece of work. Some may be transported. I was not.

Omg.. I loved this book so much! If you are a fan of Sarah Waters novels this book is for you. Definitely a must read!

I was completely absorbed in this book from about page 3…couldn’t put it down. Lost sleep and squandered many potentially billable hours getting to the end of chapters. Compelling story, skillfully constructed, with an irresistibly pacey plot. Wonderful female characters, the like of which I almost guarantee you have never met in a book before. And I was impressed by how relevant their struggles were to situations in contemporary life. As a reader I was rooting for them all the way. And at every moment that I imagined I knew what was likely to happen next, I was wrong footed and spurred on again. What a debut! This book and Anna Freeman deserve to be much better known. I highly recommend.

No início a história é um pouco lenta e demora a engrenar mas, após engrenar, torna-se uma leitura muito divertida e agradável. Um bom livro.

This is a great, absorbing read, and really well written. At first I thought I might not like it because I don't have any interest in bare knuckle fighting, past or present! But it turns out that you don't need any interest in fighting as such to enjoy this novel, as long as you're interested in human struggles to have reasonable lives and good relationships. It's full of life and passion, and gives fascinating insight into Bristol at the end of the 18thC without our ever feeling 'I am reading research'. The three narrators are Ruth, a poor woman who becomes a bare knuckle fighter as her only alternative to prostitution (apparently women really were used, in 1800, as an act to attract the crowds to the 'serious' business of male boxing), Charlotte, a middle-class woman who sees Ruth fight and is inspired to stand up to her husband, and George, a man who both loves, controls and depends on the middle-class woman's alcoholic brother. Refreshingly, the two women are not beautiful, and the sexism of the period is made clear in the story through the limited space for manoeuvre women had, whatever their class. A page-turner that leaves you thinking... an exciting, unpredictable plot, and vivid scenes that will stick in your mind.

So well written, it kept me even through grim scenes and subjects when I otherwise would've put the book down.

This is a very good book: the characters are vivid, the dialogue is snappy, and the story wends itself quite nicely. I've recommended it to several people. That said, I feel like it's being marketed a bit unfairly with its heavy-handed references to female boxing and female friendships. The book is not a look into the lives of two lady pugilists in 18th-century England; it's the story of five very different people, whose lives are--for better or worse--stitched together through their varying connections with the boxing world. Like I said, it's a very good book... but it was not what I expected.(Also, almost unrelated, but: I'm really not sold on this whole "each paragraph follows a specific character" that seems to be making a comeback. It's clunky, and jarring, and I object! What happened to figuring out a way to weave in and out of different peoples' stories?)