“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.
“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
“As blazing and distinctive a performance as I’ve beheld in a long while. Bullwinkel’s figurative language is tethered at one end to the distant galaxies, at the other to the cellular structure of her young fighters’ bodies. Whole lives are strung between. I’m amazed.”
―Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel and Motherless Brooklyn
“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
“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
“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
“Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot is a powerfully compelling and evocative look at the lives of girl boxers, told in a style of beauty and concision. I loved it.”
―Brandon Hobson, author of The Removed
“A true portrait of life as a young girl boxer. The accuracy with which Bullwinkel depicts thinking while competing in a boxing match is excellent.”
―Ginny Fuchs, American Olympic Boxer and four-time National Champion
“Brilliant Bullwinkel brings us inside the bodies of the best girl boxers in America. Here, in the head of a fighter, pasts and futures explode from fists to insist on the present. What is it to stand in opposition to another? What troubles and thoughts power each punch? Bullwinkel, like the finest of fighters, wields grace and vision, a most powerful hit.”
―Samantha Hunt, author of The unwritten book
“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.”
