Name: Jess Rez's review of Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
Item: Headshot
Rating: 4
Author: Jess Rez

Rita Bullwinkel

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by The Washington Post, NYLON, Lit Hub, The Millions, The Rumpus, and more A March 2024 IndieNext Pick “As blazing and distinctive a performance as I’ve beheld in a long while . . . I’m amazed.” —Jonathan Lethem An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competition An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win. Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivates young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.

A Novel

Headshot

Laura Dobie

The coaches dissect the wins and losses of the day like vultures pecking at a dead stallion. If their girl boxer lost their match earlier in the day, they blame it on her failings, her inability to listen, her physical limitations. If their girl boxer won their boxing match today, they claim the win for themselves. 

Tanya Maw's sister is two years older, the perfect age gap for wisdom transmission.

The hometown gym that Iggy and Izzy both box in reasoned that it takes only one coach to collect a cheque. Iggy and Izzy are sharing a coach in this first-round match. Their coach stands outside the ring, in a neutral corner. He looks like the relative everyone wished declined the obligatory invitation to Thanksgiving dinner.

In San Diego Rachel runs long paths in the woods to forget where she is, what her body looks like, that she has a body that people talk to, that she knows how to talk. Running for Rachel turns into a hovering above her own head after the first two miles. It's good for the muscles, Rachel's regular coach from her hometown gym tells her. But really Rachel thinks running is best for forgetting she has a head.

You can't train for a sport unless you believe you have control over your own destiny. The point of training is to change the outcome of the future. You train to change something you otherwise would have lost.

This so accurately sums up what it’s like to be famous in something niche: outside of that bubble, no one knows who you are.

And the fact of the matter is that the actual power that the Victor family has is extremely limited. It exists in small bubbles, in the very low number of women's youth boxing gyms that persist. In those spaces the name is fabled, but at the chain restaurant, at the department store, at the parent-teacher conference, at the real estate company where Mr Victor works - the Victors are close to no one. Mr Victor's numbers are down. Mr and Mrs Victor live in a double-mortgaged house in an undesirable suburb. They don't own any pets because pets are impractical and expensive.

Lindsay

There are people who, just by looking at disasters, implicate themselves in the violence at hand. These people, the self- implicating people, are far less likely to be victors, but they are more emotionally intelligent, and more likely to be able to see details that others might miss.

It is amazing the power that a strange hat will give you.

Rachel had a theory about other humans: people are the most scared by what makes zero sense to them but that they cannot, no matter how they try, avoid. Because of this, Rachel tried to live her life in as frightening a way as possible,

Nobody can ever possibly know what a specific body is good at unless they’re inside it.

The coaches really are useless, like stoned older brothers getting paid by their parents to chaperone a middle school dance.

Artemis Victor has no idea what it takes to own a house, but she knows what it takes to beat other people, which is what owning property seems like, beating other people at owning a piece of the earth and making that piece of earth yours, not to be shared with other people, because the owning of the property is a product of your victory over other humans, as in, you won more dollars than them so now this slice of land is yours for keeps.

Ritik Sahni

What I like about this novel is the perspective — teenage girls as they box in a championship that few people care about (bc they are girl boxers) and jumping ahead through time to see how they will reflect on these moments as grown women. I actually think it’d be a great edition to a high school curriculum, a lot there re: base level feminism. 

Jess Rez

Original, inventive and compelling, capturing the psychological aspects of boxing, girls’ lives, hopes, aspirations and thoughts about their bodies, and the treatment of women’s sports.

Such an original idea, I want a book about each girl boxer! Couldn't put it down

Ritik Sahni &
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

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Ritik Sahni &Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Ritik Sahni &
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel