Headshot
Rita Bullwinkel
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Headshot
Rita Bullwinkel
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
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.
Like a fighter with excellent footwork — it has a sturdy base yet moves quickly.
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.
Bullwinkel makes surprising and shrewd connections between the world of this one tournament and the other hidden worlds that girls build in plain sight.
Bullwinkel’s rhythmic, muscular prose matches the visceral, sometimes stomach-churning material.
Boxing has inspired some of the best sports writing, and we can now add American author Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel to an expansive canon.
The experience of reading it is exciting.
Feels like the complete deal in a way we rarely see in debut fiction: efficient, forceful, just messy enough to be interesting and leaving space in the ring for the reader..
Knockout.
A brilliant conceit for a book. Bullwinkel is pretty good on the actual boxing.
Vigorous.
Again and again, Bullwinkel emphasizes the indignity of the contest.
Impressive.
The author writes with intimate knowledge of boxing, of how the girls move and hit each other and how their bodies react to these blows. This is a special little world for girls and by girls—outside of a few family members and a handful of disinterested male coaches, they’re the only people there—that Bullwinkel draws with grit and grace..
Smashing.
The classic momentum of a sports narrative unfurls in unusually lyric and muscular language: a ferocious novel..