Headshot
A Novel
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by The Washington Post, NYLON, Lit Hub, The Millions, The Rumpus, and more
A March 2024 Indie Next Pick
“Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
“As blazing and distinctive a performance as I’ve beheld in a long while . . . I’m amazed.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel and Motherless Brooklyn
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 motivate young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The smashing debut novel from Bullwinkel (after the collection Belly Up) takes the measure of eight teenage girls as they compete at a boxing tournament in Reno, Nev. The first match features Andi Taylor, troubled by memories of the boy who drowned at a community pool during her lifeguard shift, up against Artemis Victor, who's from a family of fighters and is looking to show up her accomplished older sister. Next up is oddball Rachel Doricko, whose trademark raccoon-skin hat is just one way she keeps her opponents off-balance, taking on the more pampered, mathematical-minded Kate Heffer. Cousins Iggy and Izzy Lang have more than familial rivalry on their minds when they face off. Lastly, two vicious young Texans— Rose Mueller, a spiritual seeker who's turned away from the Christian church she was raised in, and Tanya Maw, destined for semistardom—step into the ring to settle their differences. For all the toe-to-toe realism and visceral descriptions of the girls' blood sport, Bullwinkel's real interest is in their inner lives and the picture that forms when considered as a whole ("you can send your mind up through the hole of the worlds built by the other girl boxers travel through the layers of different imagined futures, and the different ways each girl has of being"). The fragile lives of her weekend warriors are faithfully portrayed in prose that is intelligible but never commonplace, virtuosic yet grounded. Bullwinkel's knockout performance mops the floor with rank pretenders.
