The Knockout Queen tells the story of Bunny and Michael, two utterly unique individuals who are quite different at first glance, not the type of high schoolers you would expect to be friends. Bunny is a stunning, abnormally tall, blonde who lives in a fancy house in the upper-class neighbourhood of North Shore. Her father is known by everyone in town as a real estate magnate, her mother is deceased, and Bunny has dreams of becoming an Olympic volleyball player. Michael, on the other hand, moved into the small house next door with his aunt at age 11 when his mother went to prison for stabbing his father. He wears his hair long, applies eyeliner, and dons a septum ring in hopes of disguising the fact that he is gay by instead passing for just plain “different.” Secretly, however, he meets older men online for trysts that he finds exciting, frightening, and everything in between.
It takes a few years for Bunny and Michael to even talk to one another, but once they do, they realise they have more in common than one might think. They quickly become inseparable, as they both feel like “outsiders” who find the acceptance and companionship they have longed for in one another. During their senior year of high school, however, their lives take a drastic turn when the unexpected happens.
Thorpe’s story immediately enfolds the reader, moving them swiftly forward, swept up in the current. Nothing in this story is as black and white as we may be led to believe life is, or should be. Thorpe explores the humanity of each and every character on the page. She challenges complex concepts of what is deemed “good” versus “bad,” “right” versus “wrong.” She questions what love means, what that looks like, and how it may vary between family and friends. These are all ideas for which there are no clear definitions, yet certainly the reader has ingrained ideas of their own for what these terms mean. Taking the probing even a step further, Thorpe considers the false front that people (and even places) put on, as well as how we learn (or don’t) what really lies behind them. She examines how life inevitably influences and changes you; how just a single moment or action can drastically alter one’s future and fate.
Thorpe also explores other common literary themes with fresh eyes. She houses this story in a framework of friendship and identity. Bunny and Michael do not tell your average coming of age story … or do they? Thorpe does, after all, do a convincing job of portraying high school as the cringe-worthy experience it is for many; full of bullying and pain and heartbreak during a time when one first learns to navigate the world around them. As Bunny and Michael come to know each other, they also come to better know themselves –who they are, what that means, and how to express it — or perhaps they just feel more comfortable in allowing their true selves to shine through when they are together. The purity of their friendship reflects the desire to be seen, known, and understood which lies at the core of each of us as humans, particularly during the vulnerable period of adolescence.
Bunny and Michael demonstrate how we can be many things simultaneously, how our inner essence is not so easily defined. They question where they fit within their families and the larger world around them. They learn how to navigate the thorny, unexpected ups and down that life throws at you when you least expect them. And ultimately their relationship captures the beautiful desire for friendship, for finding that person who can know you inside and out, who can accept you unconditionally. Thorpe traces this friendship through many of the ups and downs one might expect between a pair of teenagers, and then some. And it shouldn’t be ignored that she has a sly way of infusing humour throughout to keep the story from growing too bleak altogether.
The Knockout Queen is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers. Many thanks to Knopf for providing an advance copy of this novel. I adored it! All thoughts and opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
Rufi Thorpe received her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. Her first novel, The Girls from Corona del Mar, was long listed for the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize and for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. Her second novel, Dear Fang, With Love, was published by Knopf in May 2016. She lives in California with her husband and two sons.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Rufi Thorpe returns to the subject that made her debut novel The Girls from Corona del Mar so endlessly compelling: the complexity and urgency of best friendship. In The Knockout Queen two unlikely friends form an alliance—a slight, hyper-intelligent gay teen named Michael Hesketh and his next-door neighbor, the remarkably tall Bunny Lampert. Each is antagonized for their differences—Michael for being attracted to the “wrong” people (much older men from the Internet) and Bunny for having the “wrong” body, one with a strength she can’t always control. As their bond intensifies, an accidental act of violence leaves both characters, and their friendship, forever transformed.
The Knockout Queen is about the lengths we go to protect our friends, and what happens when the binding threads of love are stretched to their snapping point. This is Rufi Thorpe at her finest: intoxicatingly charismatic storytelling, a compelling, seductive talent with every sentence.
