Kayfabe by Chris KoslowskiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm a pro-wresting kid; The Ultimate Warrior defeating Hulk Hogan to unify the (then) WWF Intercontinental and World Championships at Wrestlemania VI is a core memory of my youth. I owned the toys, played the games and mimicked the moves on unwitting friends (apologies to all those left with bruises from Ric Flair Chops).
So Chris Kosolowski's Kayfabe, a literary novel set in the world of mid-tier pro wrestling, is a deadshot bullseye into the center of my Venn Diagram. Sign me up.
Kayfabe is, for the most part, an absolute treat. Kosolowski has a mastery of character, action and pacing. We open with Dom Contreras, ten years into a go-nowhere pro wrestling career, wrestling at a state fair, his little sister Pillar in tow. The ring action is compelling without being over-written. There's just the right amount of wrestling jargon. When Dom breaks his opponent's arm for breaking the unwritten rules of Pro Wrestling during their match, we feel the violence.
Kayfabe is, for the most part, an absolute treat. Kosolowski has a mastery of character, action and pacing. We open with Dom Contreras, ten years into a go-nowhere pro wrestling career, wrestling at a state fair, his little sister Pillar in tow. The ring action is compelling without being over-written. There's just the right amount of wrestling jargon. When Dom breaks his opponent's arm for breaking the unwritten rules of Pro Wrestling during their match, we feel the violence.
The engine of Koslowski’s novel is the gas-on-fire relationship between Dom and his sister/adopted child/protégé Pillar, rescued from their drug-addled mother. By teaching her the pro wrestling ropes, Dom hopes to ingratiate Pillar to wrestling promoter Bonnie Blue and save his sister from their past.
The writing is good; downright excellent in places. Kosolowski deftly sprinkles bits of magic through the text. There's Yucca Mountain Coffee, a bizarre café (named for an infamous nuclear waste repository) where a single cup cost $75 and the only thing the baristas will give Dom is a weekly tub of used grounds that he then turns into some sort of psychedelic superjuice. There's also chance encounters with women on chat roulette sites and out-of-body experiences with VR machines.
The writing is good; downright excellent in places. Kosolowski deftly sprinkles bits of magic through the text. There's Yucca Mountain Coffee, a bizarre café (named for an infamous nuclear waste repository) where a single cup cost $75 and the only thing the baristas will give Dom is a weekly tub of used grounds that he then turns into some sort of psychedelic superjuice. There's also chance encounters with women on chat roulette sites and out-of-body experiences with VR machines.
It's all so delightful and weird and the pacing is just *perfect.*
Then we reach the Act III turn and the wheels start to wobble. Promoter Bonnie Blue offers Pillar a contract and a path to the big time, so long as Dom agrees to participate in "The Pit," a guerilla wrestling promotion where the action is scripted but the violence is very, *very* real. It's a brilliant turn set up by Dom's violence in Act I...except most sections relating to The Pit are told in a bare-bones summary. We're told The Pit becomes a phenomenon without ever seeing The Pit actually be a phenomenon. We're told The Pit quickly implodes without seeing it implode.
Then we reach the Act III turn and the wheels start to wobble. Promoter Bonnie Blue offers Pillar a contract and a path to the big time, so long as Dom agrees to participate in "The Pit," a guerilla wrestling promotion where the action is scripted but the violence is very, *very* real. It's a brilliant turn set up by Dom's violence in Act I...except most sections relating to The Pit are told in a bare-bones summary. We're told The Pit becomes a phenomenon without ever seeing The Pit actually be a phenomenon. We're told The Pit quickly implodes without seeing it implode.
There's also a strange continuity error in Bonnie Blue's final chapter (a VR wrestling match against Andre The Giant); she talks about her father living forever on one page only to wish he'd lived to see this moment the next. Added to the sudden onslaught of summary chapters, it feels like Kayfabe's ending received heavy edits, that the manuscript wanted to be 100 pages longer but the publisher tapped out early.
The book’s title, a nod to the well-known secret of scripted wrestling, combined with a beautifully written ending from Pillar's point of view, suggests the characters in Kayfabe are themselves performing characters for one another, winking at the audience, hinting that there’s more than meets the eye. What that something more is, I'm just not sure. As it is, Kayfabe a really good novel that's just a hair’s width from being great.
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