GLOVE SHY

Hurley recounts the struggles of her boxer brother in this debut family memoir.

Sports were everything to the author’s father, a high school coach and athletic director in New York’s Hudson Valley. Boxing, especially, was appointment viewing: While Hurley was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, their New Paltz neighbor, the legendary Floyd Patterson, battled Muhammed Ali for the title of heavyweight champion of the world on two separate occasions. It was no surprise that the author’s older brother, Brian, took up the sport, training at the local Huguenot Boxing Club under Patterson’s tutelage as soon as he was old enough to get in the ring. “We never knew as we came around a corner if he would be shadowboxing, using the reflection of a window or the bathroom mirror or maybe even the toaster,” remembers Hurley. Brian was a natural talent and soon attracted attention. The author, who worshiped her brother, followed his fledgling career every step of the way and even dated one of Brian’s closest boxing friends for a time. Hurley takes readers through her brother’s journey, from a golden boy with Golden Gloves and Olympic dreams to a washed-up fighter plagued by drug addiction and depression. Brian’s rise and fall had repercussions for the entire family, but especially for the author, whose love for her brother would ultimately spiral into anxiety, resentment, and grief. Hurley has a talent for capturing the violence and emotion of a boxing event with her crisp, vibrant prose: “I could hear some yelling, draw! Draw! Draw! But there was no draw in an amateur fight. Someone had to be the winner, someone the loser. Behind those yells, I heard another refrain begin, Hur-ley, Hur-ley, Hur-ley.” Though boxing is at the heart of the narrative, it is really a story of family dynamics and the gravity that parents and siblings exert on each other. Though perhaps longer than necessary, this is an evocative portrait of two figures—a boxer and a writer—struggling to make a place for themselves in the world.

A rich, probing memoir of sport and family.