Fight Song

"Not many authors can shift from satire to sentiment so easily, but Mohr is a clever enough writer that he manages to pull this off...As the plot in "Fight Song" becomes increasingly surreal, it gets funnier, and the emotional veins it taps into grow more real and textured. The novel becomes a kind of parable, a story of man searching for redemption." —LA Times

"A brilliant and skilled storyteller, Mohr wraps the inherent truth in quirky, off-beat characters and situations that compel his readers to passionately cheer for even the most off-color, despicable characters simply because they're just so damn likable." —Huffington Post

"Fight Song is fun and smart at the same time. It demonstrates what I have long suspected: Our most powerful coming-of-age moments occur not in adolescence but in middle age, when the stakes are higher and we have so much more to lose." —San Francisco Chronicle

"There may be a lot of writers in this day and age, but there are not a lot of writers like Joshua Mohr." — Vol. 1 Brooklyn

"Mohr has real affection for his characters and his setting."—East Bay Express

"Think 'This is 40' set in Silicon Valley, filtered through 'Little Miss Sunshine.'" — San Francisco Magazine

"In line with the schlubby antiheroes of Sam Lipstye and Gary Shteyngart’s novels, Bob is set in his ways; he is self-loathing but also unable to envision himself as anything but “another half-drunken, lonely, sad, suburban father.”— The Rumpus

“It’s hard to believe a suburban father’s desperate quest to turn his life around could be so much fun, but that’s exactly how readers are likely to react to Fight Song... a brisk, contemporary Odyssey with Cyclops and the sirens replaced by a cast of characters including a crying magician, who doubles as a marriage counselor and a bodybuilding fast-food worker who moonlights as a phone-sex operator. Mohr…brings a dollop of David Sedaris–like humor to the pathos. While irreverent, he gets to the heart of real emotion with bracing frankness…It’s a surprisingly sweet, rollicking tribute to anyone who’s ever needed a fight song to fight back.” —Booklist

“An unusual take on a mid-life crisis narrative, Mohr's novel… offers unexpected—often brilliant—confrontations of modern clichés…Mohr's elegant writing and colorful milieu is refreshing, an interesting mix of Charles Bukowski and Tom Robbins, with a cinematic heaping of the Coen brothers for good measure.” —Publishers Weekly

“Mohr has a clever imagination, and this book... hinges on some universal issues, namely Bob’s struggles to rekindle his romance, recapture his creativity, and regain control of his life. To the book’s credit, Mohr never loses the story’s emotional heart.” —Kirkus Reviews

"The book is a humorous ride through one week in the life of a middle age man who is going off the rails...Fight Song has the reader pleading with Bob to try to escape the madness of his inert life." —Zyzzyva


"The satire comes thick and fast on each page." —Library Journal

"With his fourth novel, Joshua Mohr pushes himself into bold new territory and doesn't skip a beat. Fight Song is a whimsical, madcap, delightfully depraved fable for our age." —Jonathan Evison

“Bob Coffen of Joshua Mohr's Fight Song is among the most vivid characters I've encountered in recent fiction. He's a man so alive on the page, funny, self-depreciating, confused. We can all relate. As much love song as fight song, I found myself rooting for Coffen on every page of this surprising and poignant book.” —Peter Orner

"A wry, intelligent, and sublimely funny novel, Fight Song answers Big Questions while keeping the reader entirely absorbed and thoroughly entertained.” —Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers