Tietam BrownMick FoleyAlfred A. Knopf: 248 pp.,...

Tietam Brown

Mick Foley

Alfred A. Knopf: 248 pp., $23.95

In an earlier life, Mick Foley was a three-time WWF champion, wrestling under such noms du ring as Dude Love, Cactus Jack and Mankind, a character inspired by Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”

At a time when book-jacket bios frequently contain such roguish qualifications as “former stripper,” “professional window washer” and “screenwriter,” Foley’s CV promises a particularly piquant authenticity. And so it turns out that Foley’s first novel is a no-holds-barred affair, spun out in no-nonsense declarative sentences that have the disconcerting -- and often exhilarating -- effect of slamming the reader face-first into the turnbuckles: From eyeballs popping out of their sockets to castrations to tape-recorded sexual humiliations, there’s plenty here to make you wistful for the lighthearted old days of the Sheik and Bobo Brazil. But Foley’s sweaty flair for the ripe and the ribald is a mask for an outsize heart, that quality that gives champions their edge and gives this rollicking, violent and sometimes uproariously funny book enough tenderness to fill Haystacks Calhoun’s capacious overalls.

His teen narrator, Antietam “Andy” Brown V is the ultimate underdog: Orphaned virtually at birth (his mother died bringing him into the world), grievously injured in a car crash as a boy (he lost an ear and control of one of his hands) and eventually relegated to reform school (where he was nearly raped), Andy has acquired some survival skills. But can he survive the sudden reappearance of Tietam Brown, his incredibly strange father, given to performing calisthenics in the nude, listening to Barry Manilow at ear-splitting volume, guzzling Genesee Light and violently seducing other men’s wives? Is this wiry freak Andy’s long-lost tag-team partner or an adversary ready to pile-drive him to the mat at a moment’s notice?

Every page of “Tietam Brown” contains the queasy threat that something awful is about to unfold, whether it be pumped-up jocks ready to pounce or Andy’s No. 1 predicament: the affection of the bodacious Terri Lynn Johnson, who, for some odd reason, has fallen in love with him. Like the WWF itself, this frighteningly readable novel is a cartoonish meditation on the clash of good and evil, innocence and experience. And, much like adolescence, there are times when you find yourself chanting for blood and others when you’re snickering at the absurdity of it all.

*

The Center of

Everything

Laura Moriarty

Hyperion: 292 pp., $22.95

In Laura Moriarty’s impressive novel about a girl named Evelyn Bucknow growing up in Kansas during the 1980s, the center of everything is her home state, the landlocked focal point of the United States and, according to classroom maps, the dead center of the entire world. But the center of everything is also Evelyn herself, who, as she comes of age from grade school to graduation, is a virtual eye in the contentious hurricane of the 1980s. We see her weighing the pros and cons of evangelical Christianity, Mario Cuomo’s 1984 Democratic convention speech, Iran-Contra, creationism in public schools and smoking pot.

No less mythic a figure than Ronald Reagan floats above Evelyn’s troubled teenhood, looking down with that familiar mixture of grandfatherly indulgence and intolerant scorn. Evelyn’s own grandfather is a Reagan-esque fellow: emotionally distant, judgmental and a hypocrite on the home front. Her born-again grandmother tries to bridge the gap between her coldhearted husband and his estranged daughter, Tina, Evelyn’s mother, one of those single moms that Reagan had it in for. In fact, nearly everything about Evelyn’s life goes against the status quo: Her mother is eventually forced to accept welfare; she dares to achieve in school despite the ridicule of the country-club set; and she’s drawn to science, even while attending healing services at the roller rink.

“The Center of Everything” is a wrenching account of a Midwestern girl having to learn and unlearn life’s lessons over and over, stuck in the dead center of a culture war that continues to be fought. Did the ‘80s ever really go away? The Ocean Pacific sweatshirts might have but, as Moriarty expertly shows, its battles and the battles of youth rage on.