Stephen Florida (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
I've met Stephen Florida. I didn't like him. At all. He's violent, spiteful, and constantly slouching into depravity. He's the most disturbed character I've read since American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. Only, Stephen is entirely believable, and if you've ever cared about anything, ever obsessed over a goal at all, you'll find yourself identifying with him. Cheering him on. Gabe Habash explores dangerous and frightening obsession in his masterwork of storytelling, form, and voice. Read Stephen Florida slowly. Read it twice. It's quite likely the best book I've read that was published in the last decade.
— From Eddy's PicksJune 2017 Indie Next List
“Spanning a college wrestler's senior season, Stephen Florida is eerie, unsettling, and unlike anything else. It can be hard to live in Stephen's head, but it is impossible to stop reading or to forget what you find there. Stephen is unpredictable, sympathetic, focused, frenzied, cold, and tender. He is hard to love, yet I love him. We are lucky to have a new novel like this: something you haven't seen before, that makes you remember what good fiction is capable of.”
— Tyler Goodson (E), Avid Bookshop, Athens, GA
Description
Foxcatcher meets The Art of Fielding, Stephen Florida follows a wrestler in North Dakota during his senior season, when every practice, every match, is a step closer to greatness and a step further from sanity. Profane, manic, and tipping into the uncanny, it's a story of loneliness, obsession, and the drive to leave a mark.
About the Author
Gabe Habash is the fiction reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. He holds an MFA from New York University and lives in New York.
