Boxer Handsome

A powerful debut from a talented new writer, filled with blood, sweat and tears.

Stylist, Best Books of 2014

Bare-knuckle fiction – tough, tender and lyrical. A fine first novel

JOHN KING, author of The Football Factory

A tremendous debut -- lean but capacious, elegant but tough, tempered but resonant. It marks the arrival of an important new talent.

Andrew Motion

Boxer Handsome is a story told in hope's shadow, where life, organised and disorganised, scars. This is a compelling novel - brutal, tender and true.

Joe Stretch, author of Friction and The Adult

Anna Whitwham's own East Side Story, set between two rival families in Clapton, is a vivid evocation of the worlds of old and new London, of the tribal immigrant experience built between boxing gym, tenement and canal bank. By turns brutal and beautiful, tender and dangerous, Boxer Handsome is a visceral and luminous debut.

Cathi Unsworth, author of Weirdo

So good it hurts. Anna Whitwham joins the very best to have written about boxing: F.X. Toole, Joyce Carol Oates, Harry Crews and Norman Mailer.

Nick Stone, boxer and author of Mr Clarinet

A raw and bloody book... Whitwham is an accomplished writer with a gift for description... I expect this will be the first of many novels from her. Boxer Handsome is powerful if gruelling.

Rosamund Urwin, Evening Standard

Anna Whitwham's first novel does not read like a first novel. It is lean, polished and fit as its subject. The pleasure of reading the book is the sense throughout of a safe pair of hands at work on an unsafe subject – and a challenging city. This is a less-written-about London: depressed, tough and gallant (one can imagine it as a film by Ken Loach).

Kate Kellaway, Observer, Debut Authors of 2014

A familial connection gives this exciting debut an authenticity, which allied to a confident writing style, suggests Whitwham has a promising future ahead of her. Whitwham's writing is as sharp as a one-two combination, short punchy sentences that capture effectively the brooding atmosphere of the East End. But the book is tender, too, a change of pace that deepens the emotional resonance of the characters. A promising debut.

Flemmich Webb, Independent

Rich in detail and elegantly written... Whitwham has considerable talent

Sunday Telegraph

Anna Whitwham's debut novel doesn't pull its punches. Well-written and worth watching

Independent

This story is just as much about territory and escaping who you are, as it is about boxing. Full of sober realism and broken dreams, she's got the sort of narrative that would make Shane Meadows sit up.

Fiona Wilson, The Times

The fights are described in glorious visceral detail but this unconventional love story is just about the ducks and dives as much as it is about the hits and wins. Whitwham's East Side Story packs a punch, and is a knockout debut her family could only be proud of

UK Press Syndication

Here is a book that deals with its milieu head-on, and doesn't shrink from demonstrating that the ill-health and trauma experienced in these communities is genuine... This is a book that is truly written from within, and is therefore a powerful antidote to the snobbery infecting much of the clamour around how a large section of society is portrayed

CultureCompass

A genuinely impressive debut. Boxer Handsome does everything great fiction should, offering up characters who stay with the reader long after the end of the book, giving an almost filmic vision of places and people, and revealing a world that most people will never even think about. If you can't see what it is that people need from boxing, or why it somehow persists into the 21st century, then read this.

Bella Bathurst, Guardian

Bristles with machismo... The prose – punchy and pungent – and Boby’s terse, frustrated voice keep you in your ringside seat

New Statesman

Impressive… Gives voice to the furious, restrained beauty inherent in rigid masculinity… Whitwham certainly packs a punch

Francesca Laidlaw, Upcoming

Boxer Handsome tells the story of young Clapton boxer, Bobby, in the run up to the fight of his career. Whitwham is pitch-perfect on physicality, brutality and the pressures of masculinity at the heart of the sport, as well as authentically depicting a working-class community.

Kerry Hudson, Herald Scotland

A compelling debut novel which beautifully explores the heart, physicality and working-class origins of boxing in East London

Kerry Hudson, Huffington Post UK

Outstanding and compelling... Called to mind the prose of the great Nell Dunn and reminded me of the vital, good fighter that the novel form is

Ali Smith, New Statesman, Books of the Year