Title: A Bird, Half-Eaten
Author: Nikesh Shukla
In: I Am Heathcliff (Kate Mosse)
Rating Out of 5: 3 (On the fence about this one)
My Bookshelves: Sport
Dates read: 5th March 2019
Pace: Slow
Format: Short story
Publisher: Borough Press
Year: 2018
5th sentence, 74th page: The first thing you told me was that you’re a Southpaw.

Preparing for a boxing match can be a single-minded and obsessive passion. Especially when you feel that revenge is necessary.

This is an incredibly intense story. It’s obsessive to the point of violence, yet, there is a recognition of this in the narrator’s voice. Moments of “problematic behaviour” are quickly recognised and recalibrated. Something that I don’t often see in stories with the slightly creepy stalker types. They don’t understand that there is something wrong in what they are doing…

I loved the way in which this story flickered from present training to past fights. The ways in which his own feelings of inadequacy (Heathcliff anyone) have developed and driven him to try and become a predator, someone who isn’t “a bird, half-eaten”.

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Image source: Harper Collins Publishers