Hello to all my new subscribers, I’m so glad you’re here. Today’s piece is for my paid subscribers but my free post - Receipt from the Bookshop - will be in your inboxes on Friday. Book Club selection for January is this - discussion thread opens at the end of the month. If you enjoy reading my work please consider a paid subscription to access everything. You can interview me for that promotion here and celebrate my one year on Substack here.
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Today, I thought I’d share a recommendation for a tremendous book… that you can’t buy yet. You can’t buy it until March, but that’s only two months away, and this gives you the perfect opportunity to do something heroic and pre-order. I don’t need to tell you – Or do I? Do I? Maybe I do. I’ll do it anyway – that whenever you pre-order a book a fairy is released from its floral prison and sprinkles off into the world to make old people’s wishes come true and/or steal children’s teeth in the night. It’s a good thing!
Authors love pre-orders because publishers love pre-orders. Bookshops like mine are… slightly less keen because sometimes it involves remembering, I’M KIDDING. When you pre-order a book you’re telling the people who make books that they’re doing great. You’re investing in an industry that desperately needs your support, and you’re helping an author prove that the publisher was right to pick them. I mean, all of this is a bit more significant when the publisher has had to invest a huge chunk of their budget into a book that might sink or swim depending on the pre-orders, which isn’t exactly the case here; a book published by a smaller press, who probably pay a similar-ish advance across their list because they don’t pander to celebrities, and they only publish books they are truly passionate about.
Anyway, without further ado, here’s a book I’m also now passionate about!
It’s Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, publishing by Daunt Books on 28th March in the UK, and with Viking in the US a couple of weeks earlier, and it’s A Knock-Out.
In some ways Headshot reminds me of the film The Wrestler, but instead of being about a dried-up old man about to take his final bow, it’s about young girls smashing their way into the world, raring to go. Instead of feeling pathetic, these girls feel astonishing. Instead of being about failure, it’s about being a bloody winner. So, yes, like The Wrestler, in that it is about the performance of fighting, but more like The Wrestler in that it’s a story of what you have to have to give to compete. Fighting is always a sacrifice of sorts, but when you’re as tough as a teenage girl, you can afford to give a lot.
Told in bouts of The Daughters of America Cup (incredible title), the novel takes place over one sweaty weekend in a Nevada gym. The eight competitors have travelled from all over the country to take part, each of them bringing their own aspirations and baggage to the ring. Bullwinkel lets individual girls’ stories unfold as they punch each other in the ribs. If the girls have things in common, they’ll never know much about it. The competition moves quickly and they’re not here to make friends. They might have heard each other’s names on the boxing circuit, or read a profile in their sports’ magazine, but it’s all eyes on the prize. Competitors have to suspend their own personal battles to focus on their opponent, or channel their frustration into force.
I loved reading about these characters. Being a teenager girl is a fight; hormones that can knock you out, a body that feels like it’s punishing you, anxieties that want to take you down at every opportunity. Every girl out there is just punching her way through life, but these fighters have to put down their insecurities and whatever else is competing for attention in their brains and concentrate on the ballet of the bout. Any slippage in concentration is a weakness that an opponent will take advantage of; the mental strength it takes to not think about something that’s on your mind is a feat. These girls are trained to let their bodies take over, to read their partners like a manual on how to defeat them. It’s a certain type of tuning in that as someone who’s never been in, and never intends to get into, combat can barely comprehend, but Bullwinkel’s getting us as close as she possibly can.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m drawn to books that open up the interior lives of people I’ll never be, situations I’ll never find myself in. I might add that I’m an unwitting admirer of sports in books and on screen; if you asked me, I’d say I’m not particularly interested in sports, and then I’d bore you to death with all the exceptions. Add your favourites in the comments. Off the top of my I’m thinking of the F1 film Rush, starring everyone’s favourite Spanish-German, Daniel Bruhl, and of course, I cannot miss another opportunity to recommend my favourite book of last year– Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick The Latch, which was nominated for an actual Sports Book award! I suppose it’s not irrelevant that I have also written a book about running myself, and like Headshot, it celebrates teenage girls.
I’m not suggesting my comic young-teen novel, Three Girls, is a suitable companion read to Headshot, they have different audiences in their sights (Headshot is for an adult audience), but I think Bullwinkel and I are on the same page about the incredible power of potential that exists in the mind of a teenage girl. What I loved about Headshot was the fluidity of the scope; these girls fighting for their lives in one moment situated within the rest of their existence. The glimpses into their pasts that brought them to the competition, and the previews of their future, which might never eclipse the feeling of a win on that day. Success can mean different things for different people, but wherever they may end up, these eight girls are agreed on one definition of winning in the ring.
Boxing is not a sport I understand, I don’t think I could bear to watch it in real life, I would worry for their ears, their teeth, their tempers. But I understand the victory in pushing your body beyond its comfort, I know the success of feeling an improvement in strength and stamina, I understand ambition, and envy, and vanity and pride. I’m not going to say Headshot isn’t really a novel about boxing, because it’s absolutely a novel about boxing, what I’m saying is you don’t have to like that to love this.
It sounds amazing! ill preorder in feb! (Jan too miserable 💸)
Also not a sports fan until I watch (mostly) or read (occasionally) something that I love. Have you seen Le Mans ‘66 (or Ford vs Ferrari as it seems to be known everywhere else)? Loved that so much I’ve seen it multiple times. Also looking forward to watching The Iron Claw and obviously that has nothing to do with Jeremy Allen White. Nothing at all.