Headshot

A Novel

By: Rita Bullwinkel

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE READS OF SUMMER 2024

Named a Best Book of 2024 So Far by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Elle, Vulture, and The Guardian

“Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

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 motivate young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.

©2024 Rita Bullwinkel (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice. . . . Whatever [Bullwinkel] turns her attention to glows under her scrutiny. . . . This is kinetic writing, but it would mean little without this novel’s undertow of human feeling and the rapt attention it pays to life’s bottom dogs, young women who are short on sophistication but long on motivation. . . . [Headshot is] fresh and strong and sinuous . . . so enveloping to read that you feel, at times, that you are writing it in your own mind. It contains no bogus psychologizing. Its wide-awake characters put me in mind of the singer Ian Dury’s immortal comment: ‘I’m not here to be remembered, I’m here to be alive.’—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

“Movement between graceful meditation and descriptions of fighting allows for both a dignified and a critical treatment of boxing. . . . Ideas are made particular with metaphor and strange details, which expand time poetically in each scene. . . . Eight two-minute rounds can contain a lot, it turns out.”—The Washington Post

“Bullwinkel’s debut novel is as tense and disciplined as its characters, and she has a gift for capturing the way their minds wander far from the ring and back again. . . . There’s a mesmerizing sense of limitlessness to the narrative, which roams far into the future of these fighters even as they’re absorbing hits in the ring.”—Vulture, “The Best Books of 2024 (So Far)”

Visceral descriptions of boxing, excellent writing.

Visceral descriptions of boxing, excellent writing. Captures the raw emotion of youth sports, the frailty of the girl’s parental support system. The internal monologues added to the pathos we felt for them.

Wonderful Narrator

Very lyrical. Loved the language and many of the passages. The subject was decent and the story was ok, but not spectacular. Recommend for the beautiful prose.

Didn’t grab me

It’s not badly written I just couldn’t get into it and I think it repeated too much.

A poem

This book is poetry. The reader is terrific. She manages to get just the right amount of singsong without tipping into mawkishness. It’s amazing to listen to. The story is also amazing. Little snippets of these girls’ ordinary lives interspersed with their blood thirsty determination to fight and win. Especially interesting to contrast their single mindedness of youth and the banality of their latter lives. Really, a tour de force.

Interesting and Exciting

Very fast paced, visceral account of 8 young women competing in a boxing competition. Worth your time.

Terrible Book

I hate being critical of someone’s work, but in this situation I just had to recommend that everyone avoid this nonsense. Poorly written and devoid of any plot this was just a waste of time.

Blah

I really tried to give this a chance, but the story and performance were monotonous and at the same time offensive. The repeating of each characters name over and over and over again was particularly annoying . Too bad really- this could have been an insightful view into the world of women’s boxing.