Hello and welcome to another Book Club episode of The Book Review Podcast. I'm MJ Franklin, I'm an editor here at The New York Times Book Review, and for this month's Book Club, we're talking about Rita Bullwinkel's new novel, Headshot. Joining me to discuss the novel are two remarkable colleagues. First up, a fellow editor here, Lauren Christensen. Hello, Lauren. Hey, I'm Jay. Lauren, I think you were last on the show for our best books of 2023 episodes, speaking
so beautifully, so eloquently about Northwards by Daniel Mason. And also one exciting thing is Lauren, you just had a baby. I did. Yeah, I know. You're mentioning the last time I was on here, it feels like a lifetime ago. I guess it wasn't that long. So I just want to say one, welcome back and to a wholehearted congratulations, so happy for you. Thank you, MJ. Thanks for having me on. Our other guest is a voice you know and love, Zumana Katteeb, who was just on talking
about summer books like two weeks ago. Time flies. It feels like another lifetime ago, but thank you for having me back. Welcome back. And you may also remember Zumana from our Erasure episode and our James episode, long time book club or welcome back. Delighted to be here. And now on turn book club book headshot as always, I'm going to start with this synopsis. Headshot is a novel that's hard to describe and that's largely because the window that is
this book is simultaneously so tight and also so sweeping and large. The story is set in Reno Nevada at the daughters of America, youth women's boxing tournament. We follow 18 eighths girls roughly between I think ages 15 to 18 or so for competing and the novel is structured around their tournament bracket. We follow each fight about after about until a winner is determined and that's the plot that's it. But so much more is going on in this novel. The fights are just our
anchors as we embark on this more panoramic exploration. We meet each girl as they are fighting yes and they are sizing themselves up and their opponents up and they are striving to let them punches and we are physically in the ring with them. We are there. But then the narrative does a lot of interesting things. We zoom from the physicality of the fight into each girl's mind and they're thinking about how to win but it means to win the each have personal philosophies
that govern them etc. And then we flash again. Now we're in the past and we see some of the informative experiences that shape these boxes and what they bring with them to the ring. And then we flash again and we're in their futures and we see what happens to them in life after they've left boxing behind. I don't know if you just noticed but number of times I was like and then and then and then and that's just an example of just what this book is doing. So with the structure
and flow of the book we read to figure out who's going to win the tournament. Yes, but we also read because we want to know about the lives of these girls. Jumana Lauren did I miss anything anything that you would add to that snaps us. Wait, two the word boxing a few more times. Boxing boxing boxing boxing. Well with that out of the way I just want to start off with general thoughts about this book. Like it, love it, hate it. I just want to know big picture. How did you
feel about this book? I'm going to start with you Lauren. I thought this was a really fun book to read. It's short. It moves really quickly. You and I think it's really smart to start with the bracket structure. Like you actually see the physical bracket from the beginning and it just pulls you I mean it's basically an outline right. I mean you don't know who's going to win the bracket, but it's like watching March Madness or something. You know the structure of where this
book is going to go and it proceeds to move really quickly from there. So it's just it's fun to read. It's easy to read. But I think that simple kind of breezy structure and reading experience does belie like a much deeper richer narrative style bigger thematic concerns with the movement of time. How memory works the kind of transitory state of being a teenager. I mean this this book like you said MJ contains so much more than just eight or how many competitions. But you're right.
It's both the fights and the limited number of fights that there are but then so much more than that. And as you mentioned with the bracket structure we quite literally opened with leading lines. We know narratively we're about to converge. Yeah. These fights are going to converge until we have a champion and that's your flow. That's your structure. Yeah I agree. What about you, Juman? What are your
thoughts on this book? This is apparently the year that I get into books about sports which for a long time I just wanted to keep my loved things separate from the things that scared me which I'm like any kind of like physical contact or like ball like objects. But I loved Godwin which is about a soccer prodigy and I loved this one too. And I think it was so canny of her to choose boxing. Of course boxing now I know and we'll get into this later. It's a very literary sport.
But something that's really cool about reading this is that there's not a lot of dialogue in this book. And so the way that she's able to write about bodies and this kind of very physical language between the fighters that doesn't rely on anything verbal, anything spoken. But reading about that experience in a very well written I'm going to say punchy I'm sorry. I don't know what the other word is for it. The puns write themselves. Yeah I'm delighted to be here as I said. It's a really
thrilling reading experience and you don't get any blood on you. This is like win win for me. How about you MJ what did you think? I am in agreement with the group. I loved this book tremendously and I have to start off by saying when I heard what this book was about I got hurt so many people recommending it. They're like this is great book that you should read. It's so much word of mouth buzz. I saw it like book tables and bookshops and I was like oh it's about boxing and
I just I'm not I like playing sports. I don't like watching sports just like my attempt my I start to wander off. And so I was like I don't know if this is for me. And then I heard so many people recommending it and so I dove in and I'm glad I did because I was obsessed like I immediately wanted to talk to people about it. I think there's an energy to this book. There's is like the high octane pulse of the ring is so hypnotic. But then the writing you've both mentioned the writing.
The writing is so skilled and dexterous as the way that comes to mind. You're in the ring then you sweep and you're in their minds and you sweep and you're in the past and then at one point the camera zooms out to like the ceiling and you get this top down view of the the boxing. What's it? The ring. The ring. The whole stadium. It's not a stadium but that's Bob's something. Yeah. It's like this like rinky dink large warehouse basically and so then you're in that
warehouse. Bob and palace. Sorry. The name is whatever memories. More book people. Yeah. I can't stress that in. But even that name you hear something like Bob's palace and I don't know if it's a luxury that's coming to mind. You can up and then you're there and then you're in the future until just the way this book holds you along just so electrifying to me and then just the pros you're like you're watching these girls punchy tether and then you
stumble on a line that just stops you dead in your tracks and I have one written down. I love a quote Kate doesn't want growing up to be about losing right like all of a sudden you you're out of the physicalness and you're into this like existential pang of what it means to be a boxer but it means to be young girl all that stuff and so I can only rave about this book. I'm obsessed. The word that has stuck in my mind actually is from a Dwight Garner's review for us of this book.
He wrote that the pros was really kinetic and I think that's there's an obvious kind of aptness of that word. The movement of this book you're right MJ there isn't dialogue. It doesn't need that. The movement is all very physical. It's really in their actual corporeal like selves. It's a very bodily book and it made me think sorry of challengers and I think I read somewhere. I don't know if this tweet was real but I think I saw that that challengers was inspired by some
Freudian something. I believe. Right. Okay. So I just didn't know if that was actually true. Anyway, my understanding of this book is that the kind of one-on-one physical combat, this kind of eye contact really intends these experiences of being in the ring with one other person that it's obviously a microcosm for a human relationship right that kind of dance the back and forth that you don't need words. It's a relationship in itself but it's also this really
it's this kind of still experience. I kept thinking that the matches themselves where you would expect a boxing ring to be really loud and chaotic. I actually found that the moments these girls yeah the girls were in the rings were actually like silent and time stretched in this way that was
so impressive to me on a narrative level. Listeners, you can't see this but I've been nodding furiously because I found the exact same thing and I wrote down quote there is a sense that these girls are all alone in life and in the ring and that is because it does feel so still because you don't have that dialogue but then also because what they're going through and these fights are so deeply personal and so deeply singular right like all of these girls have very specific philosophies
and they're trying to size up their other opponents and the other opponents unless they're in that ring don't understand what's going on and especially people who are not into the sport of boxing that they don't understand what what's going on and I have another quote written down where Rita Bullwinkle writes about the girls they wouldn't impress the people who they encounter in their lives outside of boxing. They would only impress each other other women who are trying to
touch someone with their fists. Again, it's this sense of it's like this contained unit and it's so kinetic and it's so deeply personal and it's so tough to understand and unless you're there. And I think I think kinetic is absolutely the right word for this and I just think that the way she captures the drama of the staging right the lights the sounds like the dance it's it makes for a really exciting reading experience and I think she also manages to pull off like this could go
so wrong where it's like girls on the cusp of womanhood like duking it out like what's the future like before she becomes a pharmacist actually she handles this so sensitively the stakes feel appropriate it doesn't feel like she's doing some kind of like she's not doing anything
Freudian with this I don't think that this is some sort of sublimated like she she really reifies the teenagers their adolescence for what it is and treats it seriously and that is partially what makes this so enjoyable to read it's also I'll say yes it's a sports book but
there's something off about it to these girls the sport they're playing is a little bit put makes them outsiders in a way they're not actually they're not like celebrated like NBA star through something who like the world just society inherently values in this way like they're aware
okay even if I am the best at this sport what what really does that confer on me as a person I'm not going to be a boxer when I'm 35 or so so so I and then there's this sense that this is actually just I keep saying I think I said transitory before but this is just a transition period
for them and I can't remember which girl whose whose head we were in but one of the one of the competitors was thinking about her own like oh she someone is it Iggy wants to be a dog because adulthood comes quicker be and it's this torture of being a teenager for so long in this
in between stage between being a child and being an adult of that being this kind of miserable in between the thousand percent like this this this I this transition this like growing up this becoming the image that comes to mind is like a Smith like an Anvil and there's a sense like these
girls aren't just like growing up passively but are actively forging who they are there something that is so physical and so gutter all especially because it's not just them fighting their opponents but they're fighting themselves in like their philosophies or are their philosophies I want to be a
dog another person's like I need to be like water because that has this own force to it even just a drip it can can be devastating and so they have their philosophies and it's them trying to see do those stand up do those stand up next to someone else who has their own philosophy I loved it
and speaking of love that I just want to read a few other reader comments Bruce Wayne from Gotham I kid you not that's what the person said I see what you did there Batman Bruce Wayne from Gotham said I was floored when the older boxers has the younger one that the biggest bites are in your head
that and boxing as an allegory for class in America wow floored or knocked out as they say the hits kept really landing on this one I know that some more boxing buttons but also I thought that same way Anthony Alvarez from Miami wrote aside from its propulsive narrative form which made
it hard to put down my favorite aspect of the novel was the sections where the narrator explores the futures of the girl's lives the narrator delves into their life choices and how their personality treats influence their outcomes it's as if the narrator plays god and a grounded realistic manor
without the magical realism that I tend to shy away from also did anyone out here the ding ding of the bell in their head and the start of each year chapter and then one more Steven from Tagel writes I watched challengers around the same time a red headshot and I was struck by how in both the
movie and this book competitive sports embody desire in its purest form the contact high the sensuality of dripping sweat and electric muscle the taught simultaneously loving and violent psychological jockeying between competitors the raising thoughts and the ecstasy of full aching
presence the desire to win of course but also each girl's desire to resolve a particular emotional need to prove herself to define herself in relation to her opponent to escape to fully inhabit her body each match has a kind of erotic charge that shifts between attraction and repulsion
I was really impressed by how Rita's vivid characterization of each boxer made each encounter seem fresh within the repeated structure of the match I love that it's making me think of I'm gonna try to say this without spoiling who win I think it's a really a spoiler but there's one
bout between two cousins and one is older and one is younger and the one who wins reflects and and the one who wins makes it onto the next round and is then competing with someone who is not her cousin and and she reflects I don't even think I really want a box I think I just want a box
with my cousin it being this embodiment of desire and closeness and intimacy as much as it is violence and opposition I thought that was really beautiful this comment captures what I feel about this book which that is that it's about boxing but it's not about boxing but it's about boxing in the same time it's about these girls psychologies and their interior but it's also deeply about the physicalness of boxing which I want to get into a little bit more but first I think we should take a break
and we're back this is the book review podcast I'm MJ Franklin I'm joined by Shumanikateeb and Lauren Christensen and we are talking about headshot by Rita Bowlingko right before the break we are talking about some reader comments and you ballooned it to the physicality of the book but
now I just want to dive in what did you think about the boxing of it all or actually let's start here are you sporty people I think Shumanikateeb mentioned it but like no I am not I'm not on the record I am not either and I kind of mentioned it before but I am someone who likes to do physical like
I like I'm right now my biking era I went through a big climbing era before I like to do physical stuff and I like participating in sports but I don't like necessarily watching it and so my question is what did you think of the boxing of it all so much of this book is this like physical
writing before we share our opinions I just wanted to share one more great reader comment because it's from a former boxer aho from New York writes as a female former boxer myself I found this book riveting especially the sparse unsentimental staccato writing style not unlike the sport itself
two parts that stood out and felt so accurate from a boxer's mindset the control of the body that each girl benefits from or is defeated by there were some amazingly specific descriptions of slight shifts in body weight or the realization that if a boxer hit her opponent on one side
the others height would drop and the mental focus to tap into that to make that happen the other part that stood out were bullwinkless descriptions of the moment to moment when loss of each boxer when you feel like you have the win and suddenly it's over or the round or the fight
isn't yours and how quickly the brain needs to process that along with the on rush of all the thoughts or emotions that come right at it in it or after that moment it was such an accurate description without being overly psychological or sentimental great read this is going to sound
like an oxymoron but she actually had a very delicate touch about this because for me when I like zoom back a little and watch some of these matches as a reader it was fun to see how a lot of very quintessential teenage themes like control or self-determination or just like even having some
kind of dominion over your own body which is something that I think is really held at arms length for a lot of women of this age was getting enacted in this way and that was something that I responded the most to and then also just like how skilled these girls were with a type of intelligence
that I could never have and it was really exciting to read about it was like oh that does seem nice like like when you land a punch oh that must be a good feeling and it's the sense of like they know their bodies to like the centimeter they know exactly like I am not standing on the way that
I should but that is disarming to people because they don't know what to expect there's a sense like there are philosophies and their understanding of their bodies in the ring yeah do you want to is this metaphor of everything else that if how like society sees women yeah it's totally
poetic right it's like very much like a dance do you mind when you were talking I was thinking about again challengers it's a movie it's a movie right you you can see these physical bodies in space and in that way it's it's an art form you're really appreciating how they're defying gravity and
just the strength of the physical form it's a real feat that Bowenkel is able to give us a visceral sense of what these bodies look like feel like how they match up against each other you know who's bigger who's stronger who's taller who's weaker who has this this hook who's and for for people
who are admittedly not already versed in boxing speak I mean it's it's it really pulls you in it makes you feel like you're you're there watching it and I think we've all all three of us have read Chang Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Ajay Brenna I think that book too had had a real I
I choose the word again a kinetic quality where you feel like you are actually watching these scenes unfold and you're not just reading them on a page it's it's a really impressive kind of pro style and to get to know a character through her body like I felt that way about Ther War and
Stacks in Chang Gang All Stars of course their emotions were so present and eventually their emotion and physicality were bound up but primarily you get to know these women through their physical power and I felt that about the women in headshot as well and that's an experience that
I have a lot of fiction and it's cool to get to know it's really cool they're like flesh and bones and it's not so much like interiority versus physicality they're actually totally seamlessly meshed together and this how cool to just watch these young girls not be or maybe they're gangly
and awkward but they really know what to do with their bodies it's a it's a very very cool project she set out for herself I'm trying to find the quote and I thought I marked it and all my tabs are like literally falling out of my book but the quote is basically I think who is it is it Rose
Mueller gets punched and the description is something along the I'm this is an in-borsized quote but it's watching her get hit was like a storm hitting a mountain but you knew that the mountain wasn't going anywhere there's an addition to like it being a movie it's poetry to the language
in this book is so precise and evocative and my again my book is just full of underlines and tabs back to what you were asking about whether we are sports people I mean it's just actually what you were describing like being interested in athletics but not in a competitive sense actually
I think there's a quote that I did not I did not come prepared but I can just paraphrase it it's toward the end of the book and and the narrator is third person omniscient narrator is saying that the movement of the bracket right this kind of you would think it would be a winnowing
I know that word was used you you would think you're moving from eight players eight competitors to one winner it's this this winnowing right but the movement of the bracket is actually accumulative and I thought that was so powerful because I was like yeah that is exactly the feeling
that I'm getting it's it's expanding rather than narrowing you know it's a good book club when two people simultaneously go mmm after a point I never thought about that you're totally right you're doing right can I just say one more thing about the language in this book and there's a
quote and then I know you want to talk about some of the language too learn but the the quote is just language has no place inside the gym inside the gym the language uses the language of animals the language of smell and feeling and sound and grunts and like sweats and punches and all of the
I mentioned poetry earlier but like all of these girls have a philosophy or an image of boxing one person's for me to land a punch I'm thinking about the tunnels that I see in the air that and it is my job to fill that tunnel and that tunnel ends at someone's rib or another person's I am water
and I can devastate this person slowly but surely and so one of the joys for me in the language of it is every bout you step into this even though it's the same ring a totally different world because you have this whole like image landscape what about you learn there you there's something about
the pros you want to talk about yeah something that really stuck out to me I just I want to know what you guys thought about it was this habit or intentional style that bollinkle has of punctuating really every paragraph and this book we should say is told in these kind of fragment it's a
fragmentary structure so each paragraph is not necessarily linearly related to the next one it's it's clipped in this way and each of these paragraphs is there's a there's a rhythmic quality to each one where bollinkle uses the first and last name of the competitor she's talking about over
and over and over again so so Artemis Victor Artemis Victor blah blah Artemis Victor blah blah blah and and so on with all of the names it just it felt to me like this really intentional like you said poetic I mean it's that's a really auditory quality right like you're feeling that kind of in your
body as this beat as this kind of metric as like a metronome or something and I I wasn't sure I don't know I mean it felt it felt so obvious to me in such a such a deliberate choice I was wondering what you guys thought about it can I tell you I didn't even notice repetition really and I think
it's because once you pointed out and there was also a reader who commented on our book called article page about this about they didn't like the repetition you did like the repetition I didn't notice it because for me the pros is almost in can'tatory and I say that word correctly I was so caught
up in the spell of it all that until you someone pointed it out I didn't even notice like the intentional repetition I was just there I also love the name I mean frankly starting with Rida's name herself I am I'm a sucker for a good name so like I would have been happy to read Artemis
Victor as many times as she wanted to say it on the page and also it's funny like I was thinking of those names and those repetitions as an incantation MJ totally right there with you and I like I mean I don't know if this was her intention or not but it gives these girls these fighters more
of a mythic status the more you say their name the more a cruise or a creed celebrity exactly yeah yeah all the subject of language before we get away from it as beautiful as she is writing about fights and bodies and that she's good on pretty much everything even writing about Reno which I
did not know would be a pleasurable experience to read I mean she's like anything she really looks at I think is great even do you guys remember that lot I mean I don't have it at hand but where they're talking about instead of being a moths to a flame yes being lured to your death
instead of what waited for instead of death they were weight all they had coming was like alcohol like lurphine yes beautiful grim but also beautiful yeah beautiful right I mean just this idea that these we're here presumably we the readers we like the the spectators at the boxing outside the
ring are here to see these bouts these head to head competitions but we they're actually framed that the bouts themselves are actually framed as like memories right I mean it's it's very much whenever you're moving into the future you get a sense that that's really the perspective
we're watching this from that's a great point because one of my things that I was so like my blown about this book is with the pacing you're in the past you're in the present you're in the future and the first time you flashed to the past I kind of rolled my eyes just a little bit I think
that's when you're finding out that Andy Taylor witnessed all of his death and I was like oh no here comes the intrusion of a trauma plot and I was like I'm interested in what's going to happen but also I just felt because it's so fragmentary felt so choppy right and then it cuts the present and
they say the Andy Taylor says that doesn't matter at all right now all that matters is that I land this punch and to obviously the book evokes this trauma plot dispels that and then you get these flashes of the future and you see that all of these girls Artemis Victor you find out on
page 20 when she is six years old can't hold a tea cup anymore like all of these women have these longer physical ailments and for me that became the stakes of the book not what happened in the past they bring to the ring but knowing what happens to them in the future you want to think you
want to know that like this fight this sacrifice means something it's worth it and so you start rooting for that person but rooting for a certain person means that another fighter who you're also rooting for in love can't win and so it stages this like really complicated emotional battle
within you and it's just through the play with time silence silence I see my girl taking a moment yeah for all those tea cups that people can't hold into their 60s well I feel like we could talk about this book all day but before we go to some recommendations
I just want to ask are there any last things that you want to mention about about Hatchap I don't know if we could get it well I don't have anything to say I think I'm okay yeah how about you MJ I do and my last thing are some wild comps but my two comps for this book are it made me
think of Virginia Wolf into the White House which I feel feels like galaxy brain but number one I mentioned how much I love to the White House in the last book club episode but the way the the perspective plays in that book where you like are with the character and
then you're watching that character look at someone else and then all of a sudden you're in that person that that that subjects brain and then it if it's again like you're looking at what they're looking at and then you there's a sense that like the perspective is just bouncing all over the
place and I think that this book does the exact same thing so that's number one I feel like the presence of Virginia wolf is very heavy in this imagine Mrs Ramsey with boxing gloves and then that's where you get with Hatchat and then the other one is Little Women which I think is another book
about a series of very different girls with individual philosophies trying to find success on their own terms which is what this book is so that's my those are my galaxy brain comps I love those minus much more on the nose I'm excited to get into it and speaking of on the nose recommendations
that is our second segment inspired by this novel is deep dive into the world of boxing we want to just share some of our favorite books about sports and being very loose and open about how we define this these could be books that are specifically about a sport these could be books that have a sport
seen in them but are generally about other things these could be competition books like the hunger game speculative world but like athletics are involved I just want to know a big picture what are some of your favorite books what sports so learn to get away mine is the swimmers by Julia
Tsukko which came out a couple years ago it's just it's a book about this community of swimmers at a community pool and they're it's they're not competitive or anything but it's really just this sense of found community and in other people who enjoy similar athletic prowess but yeah it's
a similar I love that book and the book destroyed me because it is so intensely sad what about you Jumanna my suggestions are going to be way more literal because there are a lot of good books about boxing and physical fights Roland Bart so that is actually the opening essay in his collection
mythology is which is good um Joyce Carol oats loves boxing which doesn't shock nothing about her could shock me at this point go go go girl and then I was thinking of Katie Kitter-Murrah's debut which is called the Long Shot I think that's actually about an MMA fighter who's been out of
the ring for but you know functionally it's the same vibe I have never read that but I read a separation and I read intimacy which was one of our best books of 2021 2022 what year was it it was a best book recently and well and she was a journalist who followed MMA for years I know
I know okay wow okay it's like we went from that to writing about the hey I it's amazing I'm that person by the way who constantly has to ask which one is the fake one boxing or wrestling oh it's let's ask guys Roland Bart let's get him on the phone so readers if you have a
answer feel free to call it and my other sports books are I thought of both about boxing too I didn't know I knew so many boxing books but it is the boxing scene from nickel boys with young griff or just griff I've mentioned it on the book club before you see this person who is supposed
to stage being lost it's this black boy and he's supposed to be defeated by a white boy and he stages his rebellion he fights back and he refuses to lose and he eventually is killed for it but that scene came to mind and then that scene caused back a scene from the invisible man by Ralph
Ellison where again there's boxing and I think what the floor is electrified or something their coins I don't know it's been a little while since I've read it but two other boxing scenes specifically and literature yeah so welcome to the canon come on in the water is fine
well on that note I think that's all the time that we have today I just want to say Zumana Lauren thank you so much this is so much fun really thank you guys this is always great and I'm gonna say as always thank you listeners for listening for anyone who's commented thank you
for sharing your thoughts and we want you to keep sharing your thoughts we have an article page on the New York Times website called book club come discuss headshot by Rita Bullwinkle that's where we announced that this was our June book club pick continue to share your thoughts and talk
with other readers about the book there also before we go I want to reveal our July book drum roll please in July we'll be discussing the challenge at Mr Ripley by Patricia Heismith just wanted to have a fun thriller for the summer as I say that episode will air on July 26 we hope you join us and in the meantime have your reading