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Headshot
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
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Headshot
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Publisher's Summary
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by The Washington Post, NYLON, Lit Hub, The Millions, The Rumpus, and more
A March 2024 IndieNext Pick
“Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review
“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.
What the critics say
“Bullwinkel makes surprising and shrewd connections between the world of this one tournament and the other hidden worlds that girls build in plain sight . . . A fearless and faithful rendering of what it’s like to inhabit the secret world of girls—the disorientation, the violence, the delusions of grandeur, the simultaneous intimacy with and alienation from one another—through the eyes of eight competitors at the very edge of girlhood, playing the last hand-clapping game of their lives.” —The Brooklyn Rail
“With language that floats like a butterfly and revelations that sting like a bee, Bullwinkel takes the gloves off teenage girlhood, leaving it splayed out in all its wonder, humor, violence, and glory.” —Oprah Daily
“Bullwinkel’s rhythmic, muscular prose matches the visceral, sometimes stomach-churning material . . . Stylistically, she takes risks . . . She gives agency to a group of girls who might not otherwise be seen and shows them to us in the full flush of youth, striving for recognition and glory.” —Associated Press