In 2024, I mentioned in a review for ‘The Son of Man’ that my expectations for it weren’t high because of the ambiguous title and the front cover that doesn’t lend much to one’s imagination. The Son of Man ended up being one of my favourite reads of that year.

In 2026, I’m writing a review for 2025’s ‘The Knockout Artist’. My expectations for it weren’t high because of the ambiguous title and a front cover that didn’t telegraph much either. The Knockout Artist ended up being one of the best reads of last year.

Something something ‘hypocritical statement about judging a book by its cover’ aside, The Knockout Artist is about a boxer, Eugene, who discovers he has this neat little penchant for being able to knock himself out on demand… And this innocuous, borderline comical plot device sets the stage for one of the best examinations of a descent into a city’s underworld I’ve ever read.

The Knockout Artist doesn’t waste any time dropping us off into the action as Eugene is setup to knock himself out at a party, and it’s here that a lot of the threads that we’ll be following through are setup, including Oyster Boy and Purvis, who throughout the novel kept reminding me of some sort of twisted ‘Penn and Teller’ routine gone horribly wrong.

The author, Harry Crews, really does just have this secret to writing these characters whom feel very real and authentic, sometimes uncomfortably so, and Crews follows this up with a narrative that’s just chock full of these little witticisms and slow developments that it sometimes felt like I was reading a movie.

The Knockout Artist is a character driven affair and is made all the better by it. It’s like what if Quentin Tarantino decided to set ‘Pulp Fiction’ in New Orleans. I cant imagine what would happen to some of these densely written characters if for some reason Crews decided to throw a macguffin into the story halfway through; He’s confident enough to know that the story around these characters are more than enough to keep them interested.

Eugene in particular makes for a fascinating character study because he does appear to be a typical surface-level protagonist, but as the novel goes on, and his backstory is brought more to the forefront, and the relationships between characters morph, you can almost see in real time Eugene change with it, and not always in positive ways.

It’s not as if he turns into some A-grade A-hole by the end of the book, but Crews does such a brilliant job of building this sympathetic protagonist whom feels almost like an anti-hero sometimes, someone who fulfills neither the good guy nor bad guys roles.

It's what makes some of the later scenes with characters like Charity, Jake, and of course Oyster Boy and Purvis so compelling, their discussions so real… It’s a little hard not to get swept up in all of it as we watch Eugene, whom can be made the argument that he was already teetering toward the edge of this sort of life the whole time, navigate blindly through a world that by all rights feels almost perfect for his unassuming character; The audience practically watches on as he goes through this Dante-esque journey, not knowing what lies ahead.

There’s this almost perfect ratcheting up of tension every chapter or so as Eugene continues to descend further into this seedy underbelly, and some of the more deplorable aspects of the city, and those who inhabit it, are revealed. And like a harsh lesson I had to learn in Year 12 Legal Studies, not everything is as black and white as things would appear…

The secret sauce of the whole thing, undoubtedly, is the layer of ambiguity that coats everything. We are less watching a complete narrative unfold in ~250 pages and more jumping into a crucial part in Eugene’s life and watching him stumble his way to the finish. Yes, we get glimpses of his backstory, but its only for whatever context is needed later on. This ambiguity stretches to meet every character, whose fates and endings are left entirely open-ended, though the seeds are planted for people to speculate about where their stories end up.

I don’t think we’re ever explicitly told that certain people are good and that others are bad. I like how Crews has deemed the readers of this book intelligent enough to make deductions of their own rather than bludgeon the audience to death over the head with a script that demands certainty every paragraph.

Eugene’s ending in particular feels like a perfect culmination of his arc to that point, a dash of that secret sauce ‘Ambiguity’ (Patent pending), and an understanding of who Eugene, The Knockout Artist, truly is.

The Knockout Artist isn’t my favourite read from last year, it probably wouldn’t even make the top five… But it’s appropriate that a book in part about shrugging off such expectation gains such high regard anyhow. This truly is a little pocket gem of a book, a very solid read from start to finish, and a piece that I would highly recommend to those even remotely interested.

Mitchell Porteous (Gladstone Chapter)