Go Home, Ricky!

By: Gene Kwak

Narrated by: Tristan Wright

From a rising literary star comes a fresh, satirical novel about masculinity and tenderness, fatherhood and motherhood, set in the world of semi-professional wrestling.

After seven years on the semi-pro wrestling circuit, Ricky Twohatchet, a.k.a. Richard Powell, needs one last match before he gets called up to the big leagues. Unlike some wrestlers who only play the stereotype, Ricky believes he comes by his persona honestly - he’s half White and half Native American - even if he’s never met his father. But the night of the match in Omaha, Nebraska, something askew in their intricate choreography sets him on a course for disaster. He finishes with a neck injury that leaves him in a restrictive brace and a video already going viral: him spewing profanities at his ex-partner, Johnny America. Injury aside, he’s out of the league.

Without a routine or identity, Ricky spirals downward, finally setting off to learn about his father, and what he finds will explode everything he knows about who he is - as a man, a friend, a son, a partner, and a wrestler. Go Home, Ricky! is a sometimes witty, sometimes heart-wrenching, but always gripping look into the complexities of identity.

©2022 Gene Kwak (P)2022 Spotify Audiobooks

Critic reviews

“[An] acerbic and hilarious hyper-masculine debut picaresque... As a prose stylist, Kwak is impeccable. Every sentence is explosive, energetic, confident and hyperpolished, as if meant to be shouted proudly in a stadium of thousands.” (Publishers Weekly, *starred* review)

“Debut novelist Gene Kwak’s wrestling-centric satire unspools issues of race and masculinity (toxic and otherwise).” (Vanity Fair)

“Propulsive and poetic, full of quick-hitting monosyllables, it pounds out a drumbeat of pure sound, amid which, if you focus, you can find plentiful deadpan insights into the consummate strangeness of contemporary Middle America.” (Chicago Review of Books)