Headshot (2024) is Rita Bullwinkel’s first novel, following on from her 2022 collection, Belly Up. It’s an exciting, somewhat experimental tale delivered in the structure of a boxing tournament for young women. Scheduled over two days sometime in the 21st century, we get chapters named for each fight, and these give us blow-by-blow accounts of the action and eliminations all the way to the final. For those of a certain vintage, it could be summarised as Rocky and Bullwinkel.

All jokes aside, the Rocky franchise does appear to impress on the characters. Where the first movie had Apollo Creed as victor, here we have the Greek god’s twin, Artemis Victor slugging it out for the win. Boxing cousins share their surname with Clubber Lang. Others come with the sort of main draw name that has gone from lights to legend. Though, while all these eight competitors have made it past regional finals to fight in the nationals, it’s all taking part in a spit-and-sawdust gym in Reno. It’s as unglamorous as boxing gets, with these girls watched, advised, and refereed by men, a mix of low-grade coaches and judges all with shattered dreams as its “a place to be in power”.

In the opening bout, Andi Taylor faces off against Artemis Victor. Where Victor, the youngest of “a Russian doll crescendo of sisters” is intensely focused, so as to be the best among her boxing siblings, Taylor’s mind is drifting, caught up in personal traumas. A boy’s red trunks and the blue rays of a television are like the corners of a boxing ring having their own conflict in her head. But these matches are just as mismatched as the girls slugging it out. At times they feel like conceptual opposites, though all ultimately doomed to mediocrity. In one fight a girl who resists the concept of being a good girl (“All a good boy has to do to be good is put on a clean shirt.”) while her opponent sees herself as just that.

As the girls exchange blows, we jump from one competitor to the other. Sometimes we see them living in the moment, focused on the fight at hand, though other times we are learning about them, their lives and hopes, as they go on to become typecast actors, wedding planners, and pharmacists. Like Muriel Spark with gloves on, Bullwinkel serves up a flurry of past, present and future without ever losing the thread of her narrative. This is because time doesn’t really matter here. The mornings and afternoons dissolve into the eight rounds of two minutes. 

Thanks to mouthguards, there’s very little dialogue beyond grunts, but Bullwinkel delivers characters in other ways, notably by deflating dreams and shattering illusions. Her prose is captivating, confident, and delivered more Sugar Ray than sugary. The style is punchy and at times repetitive, an exciting series of one-twos that’s a sustained barrage of both aggression and commentary. Though each challenge for the girls is the other girl before them, what they’re really navigating is life and societal expectations and learning lessons along the way, notably about picking themselves up from loss, as they move into adulthood.

There is a sense though, that having explored much of the girls’ lives in earlier bouts, there’s less to say in the later stages of the competition. The chapters become shorter, though this at times felt like a relief, to save it stumbling on like a defeated champ. Having lasted the duration, Bullwinkel goes for the knockout with a final chapter that wraps up the book and its whirl of themes. It felt more sucker punch than clean strike, but overall Headshot floats like a butterfly, if not quite stinging like a bee.