Synopses & Reviews
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
"Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice." –Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review
"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.
Review
"Headshot is a kinetic, suspenseful portrait of eight girl boxers
locked in ferocious competition for the Daughters of America Cup. In the
steaming depths of Bob's Boxing Palace, these fighters must face each
other and the wild thunder of their own inner worlds. Rita Bullwinkel is
brilliant on the physical collision, at once strategic and feral, that
is a boxing match, and the private hopes and agonies that compel
fighters to step through the ropes." Laura van den Berg, author of
The Third Hotel
Review
"Headshot is a knockout, a novel as fierce and vibrant as its girl
boxers. I've never read a book like this, that captures girlhood and
life itself in the fleeting moments that make us." Rachel Khong, author
of
Real Americans and
Goodbye, Vitamin
Review
"The genius that is Rita Bullwinkel has finally handed us this
brilliant, perfect novel, and it is everything you hoped for; it is as
devastating and inventive and philosophical and playful as you could
imagine. I dreamed of it for days after I finished it. I dreamed of
those girls' punches and their swirling minds." Deb Olin Unferth,
author of
Barn 8
Review
"Headshot is just that ― a shot to the head, a cumulative wallop to
the senses. Bullwinkel's prose jabs, spars, feints, floats, stings, and
slowly floods us with the force of the fact: time and will can make the
dust of an ordinary life sparkle." Namwali Serpell, author of
The Furrows
Review
"Headshot is an extraordinary act of literary telepathy. With
prose as muscular and gleaming as a body in motion, Bullwinkel drops
readers into that roaring, incandescent universe that is young
womanhood. This is a book with its own pulse." C Pam Zhang, author of
Land of Milk and Honey and
How Much of These Hills Is Gold
Review
"[A] smashing debut novel . . . 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 . . . 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." Publishers Weekly, starred review
Review
"The classic momentum of a sports narrative unfurls in unusually lyric
and muscular language: a ferocious novel . . . unusual and striking . . .
Each match unfolds both in the physicality of the dusty ring and in the
consciousnesses of the fighters, their coaches, parents, and other
spectators in the tiny audience. There's not a single line of dialogue
in the book, but rather a hypnotically intense, God's-eye narrative
voice . . . For each young woman, Bullwinkel also conjures a life ahead,
and these brilliantly imagined future selves add to the richness of the
characterizations." Kirkus Reviews, starred review
About the Author
Rita Bullwinkel is the author of
Belly Up, a story collection that won the Believer Book Award. The recipient of a 2022 Whiting Award, her work has been published in
Tin House,
Conjunctions,
BOMB,
NOON, and
Guernica. She is editor at large for
McSweeney's, the deputy editor of
The Believer, and a contributing editor at
NOON. She lives in San Francisco and teaches at the California College of the Arts and the University of San Francisco.