Headlock

by Adam Berlin

A powerful debut novel. --Booklist, starred review "The crowded bar had made space an I could hear other people screaming byt no one came near me. It was a smaller circle than the one I had wrestled in but it was a circle and I went to work. I turned him around and pulled him to me, put a half nelson on him, forced his neck down. The circle opened up. There was a free space at the bar and I drove him forward, drove his face into the side of the bar. I moved my hand down his back and between his legs, picked him up and held him there, feeling his weight above my head, feeling the power in my muscles and I threw him to the floor. I wiped my shoe across the blood, lifted my foot and brought it down and brought it down, triumphant, foot on the back of a fallen opponent like a classical statue, like in the pictures my college wrestling coach showed the team at the beginning of each new season. White marble figures graceful in victory." --from Headlock

265 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Adam Berlin is the author of the post-9/11 novel The Number of Missing (Spuyten Duyvil), the boxing novel Both Members of the Club (Texas Review Press/ winner of the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize), Belmondo Style (St. Martin’s Press/winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award) and Headlock (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill). His stories and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. He teaches writing at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and co-edits the literary mag J Journal: New Writing on Justice. For more, please visit adamberlin.com

Reviews

[Jayson Scott]

Personally I really enjoyed this book. It shows you that sometimes you need to keep a cool head in certain situations. Rose used to wrestle like his grandfather until he got in one to many fights and got kicked off the team. He then started working at a garage parking cars as a valet for a living. He felt like he was a disappointment. Then his high rolling cousin Gary comes into town with his jaguar sports car. Gary then convinces Odessa to drop his job and go to Vegas with him. On the way there Gary teaches Odessa the secret to counting cards in hopes of getting rich in Vegas. While in Vegas Odessa realizes that someone is tailing Gary because he owes large amounts of money to very bad people. Odessa said he really wanted to go to California because hes never been. That is why Gary was so persistent for his strong wrestler cousin to come, for protection. Odessa just wanted to start over and make all of the wrong decisions that he has made in life right again. Odessa then has another decision to make. Either help protect his obese cousin while he cheated in a casino to pay these mobsters that are after him, or go back to his boring life in New York where he felt like a disappointment. After a couple run ins with the mobsters Gary and Odessa make their way to California with only a broken knee on Gary. This book explains that in life you will be making many decisions and that you will not always make the right ones, but it is how you recover from those decisions. When I first picked up the book I thought it was going to be more about wrestling but it is not, it is more in the mind of a former wrestler. I would recommend this book to most people especially if you are a wrestler because you can relate on some levels with the main character.

[Trevor]

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was very interesting and kept me entertained. The book never really bored me, the author did a good job on entertaining the reader. It may seem like the book is just about fighting, because of title, but it's not.

This book is mainly about this kid named Odessa Rose and he goes on trip across the country with his cousin Gary Rose. Why did Odessa go with him? Well I don't want to give it away, so you will have to find out.

I recommend this book to anyone that likes a good laugh, violence, and some sick humor. But I don't recommend it to to anyone that does not like explicit language, sexual content, and violence.

[Bart · Rating 2 out of 5]

For my full review of Adam Berlin's work, please see here:

http://www.15rounds.com/adam-berlin-t...

[John Haggerty]

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