Coffin’s descriptions of these fights offer a frenetic account of what it’s like to be inside the ring, attempting to figure your opponent’s style and weaknesses out before things rapidly go wrong ... a precise way of rendering chaos onto the page: Coffin demonstrates how even a fight as hectic as this has its ebbs and flows, and how his own confidence shifts over the course of the bout ... Roughhouse Friday abounds with contradictions: It’s a memoir about empathy that includes extensive descriptions of fighters beating one another up. But those unlikely juxtapositions make for a rewarding read. Coffin’s conclusions about masculinity and archetypes don’t come to him easily, and their repercussions on his personal relationships have seismic effects. Elements of this story—a young man ventures to a small town far from all he’s known to discover who he really is—can feel familiar at times. But Coffin finds the specificity in his own experiences, both through his familial dynamic and through the people he encounters in Alaska, to make this memoir an intense and haunting read.

At first glance, this lewd combination of testosterone and sleaze sounds like any other banal boxing story, but this is merely a glittery distraction to the memoir’s deeper preoccupation — Coffin’s compelling confrontation with his father, his mixed identity, and his ingrained sense of masculinity. At its heart, Roughhouse Friday details Coffin’s hunger for a language he can call his own ... The book’s most powerful moments occur at the arrival of...realizations: Coffin reveals how he began to see how his father created the terms of his mother’s existence...While Coffin unravels these knots with an impressive emotional dexterity, some are perhaps too tightly woven to see ... Though he has gone some way to shed the skin his father has wrapped around him, its flakey residue remains ... Roughhouse Fridayis therefore the search for a new language that never quite manifests. But it was by no means in vain. Coffin’s triumph lies in ridding the language of his father, a language that compelled him to dwell in a house he did not recognize as his own.

There is something almost mysterious about Coffin’s memoir. His remembrances of his bouts in the ring are a mixture of mystery and mayhem as he describes his fights in a manner that exalts the battle, while at the same time recognizing that the contests are often nothing more than glorified bar fights ... A quick glance at the dust jacket of Roughhouse Friday informs readers that whatever demons Coffin may have battled have been conquered. He is now a published author and a professor of creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. His memoir is a hopeful and endearing account of part of that journey.

There has been a relative proliferation of memoirs of this type in recent times...all speaking to a resurgent desire for unmediated peril in an increasingly automated, isolating world ... At root, this is a story of trying to earn redemption for a scarring childhood incident, in which a younger, less surly Coffin took a dive during a fun run, and of seeking revenge against a sentimental masculinity thrust upon him by his father during his adolescence ... Coffin, we sense, would have been insufferable during this period, learning banjo in anger and making deskbound old schoolfriends spar with him over the holidays when all they want to do is watch television. Fortunately, his narrative benefits from the gift of hindsight, and he makes reasonable efforts to temper the worst excesses of his studied machismo ... It is made clear in his mostly spare but tidy prose that for Coffin, unlike his fellow brawlers, this life is choice rather than necessity ... If the strained-for Arthurian symbolism and proliferation of butch touchstones are grating, there is at least an occasional breakthrough to something unguarded, not least in a brilliant portrait of a female fighter who, through her ability to tap into gentleness and joy rather than running on the self-conscious posing Coffin opted for, is a far more complete boxer. Only hinted at, for the most part, the stories of women in this book, the female fighters and Coffin’s mother especially, are what rescue it from being a recruitment drive for garage fight clubs.

This is a very introspective memoir in which Coffin, who now teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire, dissects his family issues, especially those regarding his relationship with his father ... this isn’t a 'boxing' book. Instead, it describes a fascinating personal journey that takes place within the boundaries of makeshift, ragtag boxing rings. Beautifully written throughout, with a heartfelt, realistic conclusion.

The author’s anger toward his father, though intently explored, feels somewhat unprocessed; there’s a raw nerve left under the surface that the author may address in future writing. The strength of the narrative derives from Coffin’s vivid and perceptive accounts of the boxing matches and the participants ... A compelling story of small-town boxing in Alaska and a complex examination of masculine identities.

Coffin’s lyrical account of his eventful initiation into the world of amateur boxing takes readers to southeast Alaska ... In measured, lucid prose, Coffin writes of fight night scenes...and of the insecurity of angry young men ... This is a powerful, wonderfully written exploration of one’s sense of manhood.