Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel, Headshot, has a depth of feeling that is like a punch to the guts. The entire book is set over the course of a women’s 18-and-under boxing championship in Reno, Nevada, each of the chapters detailing a specific bout and the two girls involved.
That’s a pretty unusual idea for a start, and the reader is thrown into the deep end as the first two boxers square up in the ring. The novel then switches between the thoughts of all eight quarter-finalists, moving backwards and forwards in time, looking at the girls’ histories and struggles in getting to this stage, and their future lives too, how this experience will leave traces within them forever.
It’s a radical kind of book, examining the idea of female intimacy through competition and violence. Bullwinkel writes beautifully about how these young women exist in their bodies, how that changes their view of the world, and what it means for them.
And Headshot is another book that uses the specific details of its fictional world to make wider connections with the reader. Bullwinkel writes brilliantly about the physicality of the boxers but also about their psychologies, as well as how the two things are interlinked. Unusual and fascinating, and all the better for that.
Doug Johnstone is an author and journalist.
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel is out now (Daunt Books, £9.99). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.
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