RaveFull Stop\"Rita Bullwinkel’s debut collection Belly Up moves with a kind of syncopated rhythm. Short vignettes and tableaus mix with more gradually accruing stories, creating a sense of restlessness — a turning from one side to another. This unfixed energy is applied to the constraints of embodiment: its weaknesses, its materiality, its maybe inherent monstrosity. From thrillingly unexpected angles, Belly Up circles around and picks at the constraints of being ... Contrasting with the book’s rigorous experiments in style are a few more conventionally structured tales ... Bullwinkel shows the same eye for detail and fine phrasemaking that she deploys more flamboyantly elsewhere, but the pacing of these more subtle pieces can feel less energetic. First-person narrations are sometimes slightly indistinct, and characters can be a bit too diligent in articulating their thoughts and observations. And yet these stories of everydayness also provide a needed break or upbeat from so many daring, overstuffed scenes. It’s the variety and balance of these elements that compel the reader to turn the page, anticipating whatever the heck is next. A strong, perversely buoyant debut, Belly Up’s pages pulse with life — and death, and a few beats in between.\
