Kung Fu

by Ryan Gattis

Youth, love and violence collide in this enthralling, hard-hitting novel by Ryan Gattis, author of All Involved."It's so tense that at times you have absolutely no idea what has just happened in the real world because you're in The Fu, entirely. You feel every blow, every break. And what a climax ..." Independent on SundayJen B's been surviving at the nightmarishly brutal MLK High School just like everybody by following the rules. She avoids the Principal. She doesn't complain. She's loyal to her MLK 'family'. And, like 99.5% of the student body, she knows one form or another of martial arts. When Jen's world-famous Kung-Fu champion of a cousin Jimmy Chang turns up, everyone wants a piece of him - including Ridley, resident drug lord and leader of the school's most violent gang. They all want to see the legendary martial-arts master defend himself during the school's merciless initiation ritual. Except that Jimmy's made a promise never to fight again - a promise that soon leads to the murder of Jen's brother and a bloody final battle that engulfs the entire school.Fast-paced, gritty and addictive, Kung Fu is an extreme journey into high-school violence and the American Dream that feeds it.PRAISE FOR ALL INVOLVED"A high-octane speedball of a gritty, nerve-racking, sometimes excruciating in its violence and at the same time animated by a bone-deep understanding of its characters' daily lives." Michiko Kakutani, New York Times"Simultaneously empathetic and unsparing" New Yorker"A tour de force . . . without glamorising his subject, there's a lyricism in the vernacular and street language that makes it hard not to be moved . . . a powerful work of fiction" GQ"The Wire meets Quentin Tarantino on the set of 24 ... All Involved offers that most difficult and nebulous thing in it reads true." Financial Times"Audacious, unflinching and subversive ... It swallowed me whole." David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks

Genres: Fiction

288 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 31, 2016

About the author

Ryan Gattis is the author of Safe, Kung Fu High School, The System (July 2020), The Big Drop novellas (Homecoming & Impermanence) and All Involved, which won the Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Lire Award for Noir of the Year in France. He lives and writes in South Los Angeles, where he is a member of art collective UGLARworks, a founding board member of arts non-profit Heritage Future, and a PEN America Prison Writing Mentor.

For UK readers, Advanced Reading Copies of The System are now available. Please visit Netgalley UK to request one.

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Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jen attends the Martin Luther King High School, otherwise known as Kung Fu High School. She has a good grounding in various forms of martial arts, like the vast majority of the students, because this school is probably the most violent you will come across in modern fiction. The school is run by Ridley, a student drug lord, and everyone belongs to a 'family'. When Jen's Kung-Fu world champion cousin, Jimmy Chang arrives at the school, having sworn off fighting, everyone wants a piece of him, and so begins the journey towards the biggest, bloodiest battle the school has ever known.

Narrated by Jen, the story could at first almost be mistaken for a YA school drama, but that would be a serious mistake. There is a chapter describing each of the 'families' the kids belong to, scoring their relative strengths and weaknesses (much like Top Trumps, a card game that was really popular in the UK and less so in the US). The violence is graphic, and quite relentless; there is not a lot of time for school work at Kung-Fu High. The results are seen on a personal level, reassuring the reader that there are serious, life-altering consequences to the actions taken, and that no-one is immune from being on the receiving end.

I have read so many quotes or phrases about how school prepares you for the real world, and even while reading Kung Fu and thinking 'This is so unreal', there is something about it that rings true. In the introduction Ryan Gattis references the Columbine shootings, where it is the actions of the few that affect the many, rather than the reverse as happens in this book. Also there is a twist to events towards the end involving the nightmare head teacher, Mr Dermoody, which turns the real life, student-led school massacre on its head. Originally released in 2005, I guess in part as a warning against normalising violence in schools, who would have thought that it would become so prevalent in society, and that it would be so difficult to learn the lessons from our collective past?

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

It would make a fun movie.

[Tshering Wangdala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Girl does the sex with her cousin(OP character who only fights at the very very very end) and doesnt even do anything after his cousin brother FMC's brother dies
bro just does nothing
and when he does something he goes to jail
bruh wtf
this is a wannabe manga trying to have an western edge to it which sucks

[Ryan Laccohee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really not sure how I feel about this book? It's really quite odd.

It didn't quite live up to my expectations, and is a little patchy.