Chris Hewitt | Star Tribune (TNS)
When a book is called ‘exciting’, it usually refers to a concept expressed in a completely new way or a fast-paced search for a murderer, but when I say ‘Headshot’ is exciting I mean that the reading experience is exciting.
Rita Bullwinkel’s novel at times reminded me of the Sarah DeLappe play, “The Wolves,” which was performed by Jungle Theater and also offers an intimate, unexpected view into the minds of teenage girls. However, I have never encountered anything quite like “Headshot.”
The novel features eight characters, all competing in a single-elimination boxing tournament. Each chapter in “Headshot” covers one of the matches in the tournament, which takes place in Reno, Nev., leading up to the championship.
Certainly, there is inherent suspense around who will claim the title. However, “Headshot” is more concerned with the thoughts preoccupying the young women, each of whom approaches the sport differently and considers its significance in their lives.
My preferred chapter is the first, “Artemis Victor vs. Andi Taylor.” Resembling a brief play, its straightforward, declarative sentences alternate between the perspectives of the two competitors, who contemplate boxing strategy at times but more frequently reflect on the events that led them to this point.
For example, Andi is attempting to make amends for causing the death of a boy while on lifeguard duty: “Most people in her life doubt her capability, let alone purposefully causing a death. Following the accidental death of the little boy, she questions whether she is capable of inflicting harm with her fists.”
The writing is not showy, but Bullwinkel, an editor at McSweeney’s magazine, consistently generates exceptional descriptive phrases: After receiving a blow, Taylor’s head “feels as if it is filled with undercooked pie.” In a later chapter, boxer Kate Heffer “can feel her rib bending inward like a cheap utensil, the teeth of a plastic fork pulled in opposite directions.”
Kate is also the focus of this rapidly intensifying surprise:
“Here she is now, being severely beaten, with a puffed-out bloody eye that makes her resemble a single-use, disposable paper plate, and that the paper plate of Kate’s body has been used for a barbecue where there is a lot of ketchup so that the ketchup has been dribbled all over the paper plate of Kate’s face to such an extent that the plate is soggy and almost unrecognizable and most certainly no longer of use.”
The book contains violence, but it is not primarily about bloodshed, and you don’t need to be interested in boxing to be captivated by it (I certainly am not). Like “The Wolves,” the young women in “Headshot” are distinct individuals – individuals who desire or shun attention, who wield their own power or flee from it – but they also function as a collective.
It’s a collective whose members are so perplexed by the world around them and its bewildering expectations that, at least for this moment in their lives, it makes the most sense to confront another girl as her equal and attempt to punch her in the face.
Headshot
By: Rita Bullwinkel.
Publisher: Viking, 203 pages, $28.
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