HEADSHOT

Over one hot July weekend at Bob's Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada, eight young boxers fight to the finish.

Bullwinkel’s first novel, following the story collection Belly Up (2018), begins with a poster and a bracket for “The 12th Annual Women’s 18 & Under Daughters of America Cup at Bob’s Boxing Palace,” with first-round pairings and names that will become incantations as this unusual and striking novel unfolds. Artemis Victor v. Andi Taylor; Kate Heffer v. Rachel Doricko; Iggy Lang v. Izzy Lang; Rose Mueller v. Tanya Maw. Each match unfolds both in the physicality of the dusty ring and in the consciousnesses of the fighters, their coaches, parents, and other spectators in the tiny audience. There’s not a single line of dialogue in the book, but rather a hypnotically intense, God’s-eye narrative voice that describes the hits and misses of each round and plumbs the backstories of each boxer: One is haunted by a terrible experience as a lifeguard; one has developed a “weird hat” philosophy based on a rotting coonskin hat; one calms herself by reciting the digits of pi; two are cousins known as prodigies in their small hometown. The girls’ bodies are evoked just as memorably: One has a purple stain on her lip that has shaped her experiences since infancy; one has legs that look like “bundles of dry pasta covered in skin”; one has looped braids sticking out of her headgear, making droopy circles on her back. As each fighter advances, she takes the spirit of the girl she’s bested with her to the next round: “Usually, as a tournament progresses, there is a feeling of whittling, of a group of many reduced to a single champion, but here in Bob’s Boxing Palace, at the Daughters of America tourna­ment, as each bout has been fought, there has been the feeling of accumulation.” For each young woman, Bullwinkel also conjures a life ahead, and these brilliantly imagined future selves add to the richness of the characterizations.

The classic momentum of a sports narrative unfurls in unusually lyric and muscular language: a ferocious novel.