The Knockout Queen
Rufi Thorpe, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525656784
Summary
A dazzling and darkly comic novel of love, violence, and friendship in the California suburbs.
Bunny Lampert is the princess of North Shore—beautiful, tall, blond, with a rich real-estate-developer father and a swimming pool in her backyard.
Michael—with a ponytail down his back and a septum piercing—lives with his aunt in the cramped stucco cottage next door.
When Bunny catches Michael smoking in her yard, he discovers that her life is not as perfect as it seems. At six foot three, Bunny towers over their classmates. Even as she dreams of standing out and competing in the Olympics, she is desperate to fit in, to seem normal, and to get a boyfriend, all while hiding her father's escalating alcoholism.
Michael has secrets of his own. At home and at school Michael pretends to be straight, but at night he tries to understand himself by meeting men online for anonymous encounters that both thrill and scare him.
When Michael falls in love for the first time, a vicious strain of gossip circulates and a terrible, brutal act becomes the defining feature of both his and Bunny's futures—and of their friendship.
With storytelling as intoxicating as it is intelligent, Rufi Thorpe has created a tragic and unflinching portrait of identity, a fascinating examination of our struggles to exist in our bodies, and an excruciatingly beautiful story of two humans aching for connection. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—?
• Raised—Corona del Mar, California, USA
• Education—B.A., New School; M.F.A., University of Virginia
• Currently—lives outside of Los Angeles, California
Rufi Thorpe is an American writer, the author of three novels: The Knockout Queen (2020), Dear Fang, with Love (2016), and The Girls from Corona del Mar (2014), which was long listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.
Thorpe received her B.A. from the New School in New York City and her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia in 2009. Raised in Corona del Mar, the setting of her first novel, she married and returned to California where she currently lives outisde of Los Angeles with her husband and sons. (Adaoted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[F]ull of verve and… vibrant… . Thorpe inverts the more common tale of an impoverished sufferer who is momentarily saved or mourned by a richer, more stable friend. The result is revelatory.… Thorpe writes convincingly about the intricacies of teenage hierarchy and the endless varieties of torture that the young can inflict on one other.
Los Angeles Times
[An] electric portrait of adolescence.
Time
Through Michael’s clear-eyed gaze, Rufi Thorpe unfurls a coming-of-age tale that feels both fresh and familiar: a shrewd exploration of all the ways people find to pass on the hurt and anger they’ve been given and a tender, furious ode to the connections that somehow still endure, despite everything.
Entertainment Weekly
Thorpe’s fierce third novel observes the development of and challenges to an intense friendship between two outcasts at a Southern California high school…. Deeply realized and complex. The result cannily dissects the power and limits of adolescent friendship.
Publishers Weekly
Thorpe's coming-of-age tale set against a backdrop filled with hate and violence will captivate readers with its brutal honesty and unbreakable bonds of friendship. Recommended for fans of Emma Straub and Jami Attenberg. —Laura Jones, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis
Library Journal
Thorpe… writes with savage poignancy as she explores identity, adolescent friendship, and the insatiable longing for intimacy. Her novel is devastatingly honest, her characters vulnerable, and her readers will be spellbound.
Booklist
(Starred review) [A]n arrestingly original, darkly comic meditation on moral ambiguity.… There are no victims here and no heroes… , and the result is a novel both nauseatingly brutal and radically kind. Brilliantly off-kilter and vibrating with life.
Kirkus Reviews
(Starred review) With charismatic characters and a surprising and devastating storyline, The Knockout Queen is a moody and mordantly funny contemplation of the rigors of growing up that will leave readers reeling.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE KNOCKOUT QUEEN … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Bunny Lampert? What about her background and status defies the truth of her underlying life?
2. The same goes for Michael: how would you describe him? Do you feel differently about Michael by the end of the book? Has he grown, learned, changed?
3. (Follow-up to Question 2) How disturbing, if at all, do you find Michael's sex life? What do you think about his love for Anthony, more than three times Michael's age.
4. Ray Lampert becomes a third partner in Bunny and Michael's friendship. How would you describe him? Talk about the way he affects their relationship.
5. Even at 6-feet 3-inches and 200 pounds, Michael describes Bunny as outwardly happy and sure of herself. But he goes on to say that people find this "displeasing in a young woman." Why? What does he mean? Why would people take issue with Bunny? What does it say about gender roles and societal expectations?
6. Michael writes that "being true to yourself, even if it makes everyone hate you, even if it makes people want to kill you, is the most radical form of liberty." Talk about Michael's observation and what it means—not just for the characters in this novel, but for all of us as well.
7. One of the major themes of The Knockout Queen is shame. How does shame play out in the novel? What is it's toxic affect.
8. Many…if not most…if not all of us feel a sense of shame. Why is personal shame so prevalent? Talk about shame in your own life, if you carry that emotion. A frequent and rather glib piece of advice, which is meant kindly, is that we must learn to love ourselves. How does one do that? What are the steps one can take?
9. In what ways are Bunny and Michael flawed, sometimes, to the point of losing readers' sympathy? Do you care about one of the two more than the other? Finally, do you see Bunny as a tragic character, flaws and all?
10. The author writes powerfully about the world of teenagers, their hierarchies, and the cruelty they inflict on one another, particularly those who don't fit in. Does Trope overdo it? Or do you think her portrayal accurate? Why are adolescents sometimes so mean?
11. How does Thorpe depict the artifice of California life? Consider Anne Marie and her lollipops, perhaps the long rows of pristinely trimmed hedges in front of North Shore's homes, or say, Ray Lampert's billboards.
12. How might the story have differed had it been from Bunny's point of view?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)