Book review: This fighter’s struggles with cocaine and boxing

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pet, pet, blow

Andrew Battershill | Coach House Books

235 pages | $23.95

To describe Pet, Pet, Slap as a novel about a boxer’s comeback is like describing Radiohead as a rock band or Poor Things as a historical drama. as a historical drama – apt enough, but far from being able to convey the whole picture. Nor to explain the genius.

The second novel featuring Peter (Pillow Fist) Wilson (after 2016’s Pillow), “the lightest-hitting boxer in the world” and a self-described “hot guy who loves to fight,” Pet, Pet, Slap showcases the engagingly talkative style of Vancouver-based author Andrew Battershill, a writer with a penchant for thinking outside the box.

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The story arc revolves around 30-year-old Pillow, “an old, faded name fighting a hot young talent,” preparing for a fight that will hopefully restore him to respectability. With deft and driving tough-guy banter, Battershill notes that pre-fight training camp is anything but going according to plan: “Pillow was about to really screw up. He knew that. What he didn’t know was exactly what he had screwed up. When you’re eight weeks away from a professional fistfight, pumped up on pharmaceutical cocaine, kissing a sloth on a couch worth more than your stock portfolio, training camp is not going very well.”

In his mansion, surrounded by a menagerie of exotic animals – a sloth, a shark and later a giraffe – Pillow must overcome some career doubts. Although the former star’s financier, manager and trainer have placed expectations on him, Pillow, “a shady man who sometimes smoked weed and reflected on his life”, is not so sure of his destiny.

Unfortunately, Eurekas are in short supply.

And as Pillow gets high and recalls life advice that veers into the cynical – “This is boxing. There’s no podium and no finish line. You’re either the best or you’re finished, bleeding on a chair. That’s it” – Battershill will leave readers doubting the man’s prospects.

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Battershill will also make readers reflect on the nature of the world the author has conjured up.

Not only does Battershill use historical figures from surrealism and give them jobs in the novel’s gangster-populated boxing world, but he soon introduces a familiar Victorian figure: “That evening, Pillow skipped his mobility session to inject liquid cocaine with his roommate, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was explaining how sad and small it is to tap into something.”

Holmes not only supplies Pillow with narcotics and performance-enhancing drugs, but is also there to entertain him. And, as is fitting, he solves cases. He also ponders and gets worked up about the motives and strategies of his arch-enemy. In Pet, Pet, Slap, this is not Professor James Moriarty, but Arsène Lupin, the gentleman burglar invented by Maurice Leblanc in 1905.

As Pillow smokes angel dust, helps Holmes with cases, cares for a sulking giraffe named Gentleman Jim, trains in intense, erratic spurts, mentally prepares for a fight with 19-year-old Julio Solis, and lets his mind wander from one subject (Cuban boxers) to the next (feeding sharks meat wrapped in paper: “You don’t have to bother with defrosting or removing the paper, because a shark’s teeth are strong enough to eat a license plate, and its stomach is corrosive enough to handle a license plate, too”), Battershill’s sharp, confident performance and short chapters are a blessing.

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This inventiveness is initially enchanting.

But as the novel digresses, it can lose some of its impact. Like a Jim Carrey- or Robin Williams-style comedian in a crazy improvisation scene, the more-is-more performance is limited in time: what is exciting in the first few minutes is much less exciting after 20 minutes.

Despite all the busyness, Pillow, Battershill’s charming anti-hero, remains the heart and soul of Pet, Pet, Slap. Impulsive, extremely unfiltered and surprisingly gentle, he keeps his eyes fixed on the page.

Salt Spring Island resident Brett Josef Grubisic is the author of five novels, including My Two-Faced Luck and The Age of Cities.

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