Synopses & Reviews
This hard-hitting collection of powerful and moving tales based on the experiences of the late, great fight manager and cut man Jerry Boyd, who wrote under the pen name F. X. Toole, is now the basis for a major motion picture starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. Breathing life into vivid, compelling characters who radiate the fierce intensity of the worlds they inhabit, Million Dollar Baby "is not just fight fiction at its finest, it is excellent fiction, period" (Dan Rather).
Review
"[A] magnificent debut collection of short stories....You may feel you've gone a couple of rounds yourself after this emotional wallop of a read. (Grade: A) " Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Toole's prose is sharp and jablike, and at its best comes at you with the rhythm of a good gym fighter working on the speed bag. Toole has a talent for illuminating the thoughts of the near illiterate but streetwise...an impressive collection..." Allen Barra, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"[An] astonishing first fiction collection....[Toole] is a heavyweight fiction contender." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Riveting stories....A less confident author might try to dress up such simple material with flashy prose. But Toole is a traditionalist, enamored of boozy romanticism and colorful vernacular, and when he throws a punch it usually finds its target." The New Yorker
Review
"A debut collection of six stories about the world of boxing, from an insider who finds beauty in its ugliness, sweetness in its savagery." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Toole's strength is his ability to convey the universal humanity of his characters....This is an impressive debut, reminiscent of Thom Jones' The Pugilist at Rest." Booklist
Review
"[Toole's] tales distinguish themselves by staying in the heartbreaking thick of it, never using boxing naively as a savage metaphor for life....As a storyteller, Toole is both sentimental as a bar song and as cruelly precise as the sport he chronicles. Recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Move over, Frank and Malachy McCourt. A new gray-haired, streetwise Irish-American writer appears to be ready to burst upon the publishing world." The New York Post
Synopsis
Originally published as Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner, this debut collection has been reissued to coincide with the Oscar-nominated film Million Dollar Baby, based on Toole's short story, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman.
About the Author
F.X. Toole was a trainer and a licensed cut man in the world of professional boxing. He was seventy when Million Dollar Baby, his first book, was published, and had been writing and battling rejection letters for forty years. He died two years later, in 2002.