“The coaches really are useless, like stoned older brothers getting paid by their parents to chaperone a middle school dance.”
“Beating someone at something that matters more to them than anything is like squashing a fly. You can see the guts of a fly after it’s been smashed.”
Next up on the 2024 Booker Prize longlist is another slim volume, this time a debut, and let me just say it rocked me. Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot is unassuming in its brilliance, and the novel about eight teenage girl boxers competing at the 12th Annual Daughters of America Cup packs a serious punch. Much like Orbital, this is a novel where the reader is mostly in the headspace of each girl while they fight, and the novel is sectioned off by matches as we spend two days with the girls in the ring for the 7 fights. The girls are very different, but there is a hunger and similarity in each swing of the fist, each drop of blood, each blooming bruise.
In addition to getting insight into what drives these children to want to pummel each other (from sibling rivalry, to attention, to anger, to just trying to find something they can see themselves in), we get a brutal and honest view of women’s sports. These girls are the best of the best at what they do and this is to determine who is the best of them. Yet the tournament is in some run-down gym, there is no hype, no spectators, no cameras, and the judges and coaches are all a bunch of men who can’t really be bothered with girl sports. Despite this, these girls pour their everything into the fights.
My favorite portions of the novel are the brief snippets worked into the bloody fights of who these girls grow up to become, how boxing and the tournament impacted their lives, what their lives look like. From a wedding planner to a gym owner, a PI to someone who works in college admissions, a grocery store manager to an actress, a wine distributer to a pharmacist – these eight girls grow up, and we get to see it – all the blood, guts and glory of these talented and competitive girls who fight as if everything depends on it. Because it does.
What a startling and stunning blood and spit soaked debut.
Read this book.
Booker count: 5 of 13
A Girl Named Tommi 