Stephen Florida

Stephen Florida is a college wrestler with a clear-eyed, bordering on megalomaniacal, focus on winning the Division IV NCAA championship in the 133 weight category. He's a full on meaty jock completely in his own head. At turns sounding like an adolescent sportbro then veering into post-grad philosophy student that's into jazz into paranoid crazy-person with stalker tendencies.

He's fascinating to read but not anyone you'd ever want to run into in a supply closet or lying in the tall grass outside your house.

It's hard to believe that this is a debut novel - it's so far out there in terms of subject matter. We bookish folk have no problem empathizing with murderous AIs, lonely ghosts and facially deformed grade-schoolers, but an entire book centered around a jock in his senior year solely focused on wrestling? Who decides that's the hill you're going to plant your authorial flag on?

I know squat about wrestling and even writing about it Habash could be fashioning his own language of terms and moves - but it doesn't matter if it's even true - it reads like music.
It isn't mechanical, it doesn't coyly veer into the homoerotic or purely metaphorical - it's compelling. It's Moby Dick loosely played out on the vinyl surface of college wrestling mats and it surprised me how much I enjoyed this book. Gabe Habash makes it worth exploring the inside of Stephen Florida's head.