A debut novel about the 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.
It takes focus and discipline and a certain single-mindedness to become a good prize fighter. It takes those same qualities to write a book as fresh and strong and sinuous as Headshot ... Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice ... To remark that Bullwinkel is observant about Reno and its casinos would be an understatement ... There is no whimsy in Headshot. Instead, there is astringency ... The impact of this novel, though, lasts a long time, like a sharp fist to your shoulder. It is so enveloping to read that you feel, at times, that you are writing it in your own mind.
Like a fighter with excellent footwork — it has a sturdy base yet moves quickly ... Her prose, meanwhile, is aptly crisp and, at times, beguilingly strange ... Dazzlingly unusual.
Bullwinkel’s conceit could’ve leant itself to oversimple takeaways: to meditations on, or sendups of, the bootstraps myth; to meditations on, or sendups of, girl bosses. The omniscient narrator does sometimes zoom out to make sharp, anthropological comments about the coaches’ less-than-noble motivations ... But these moments...aren’t usually didactic or heavy-handed. Instead, these ideas are made particular with metaphor and strange details, which expand time poetically in each scene ... This movement between graceful meditation and descriptions of fighting allows for both a dignified and a critical treatment of boxing.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
