Jane Austen meets Fight Club meets Dickens

Well this one is definitely making my favorite books of 2015 list. I’ve been saving it for my half cannonball. It has everything a person could wish for in a book: Female pugilists! Gambling dens! Orphans growing up in brothels! Handsome fops! Ladies in corsets! Scoundrels everywhere! As a huge Jane Austen fan, it was really fun to read something taking place during the same time period in a completely different context, something that’s not afraid to delve into the seedy underbelly of English society.

The three main characters in this story are all connected through the sport of boxing. I don’t even really like boxing, but it’s the scaffolding that brings these characters together. Ruth is the ugly daughter of a brothel madam who makes her way in the world by fighting. She’s brave and coarse and very good with her fists. George is a handsome gentleman lacking inheritance (he’s the youngest son) and obsessed with gambling. Charlotte is a strong-willed lady trapped and cut off from the world by the controlling men in her life. The characters in The Fair Fight are so well-written. They’re all interesting and the reader gets to see them from many different angles because the story is told from three perspectives. None of them are perfect and some of them are downright awful, but they’re all compelling.

The plot is propelling and there is real depth to the novel’s themes. I loved that the book examines deeply what it really means to be free and the different circumstances that can trap people: poverty, class, gender, sexuality, race, physical appearance, etc. For as awful as some of the people and their choices are, this was a really enjoyable read. There’s grimness, but hope and humor too.

Anna Freeman must have done so much research to put this book together. The setting feels very real and plausible. Sometimes I can’t read historical fiction because the dialogue is so badly written from an obviously modern perspective, but Freeman’s writing sounds authentic. It couldn’t have been easy to capture so many classes of English society so realistically. With her tight, dense plotting and seemingly effortless prose, Freeman is definitely an author to watch. Can’t wait to see what she writes next.