Starred review from January 15, 2024
The smashing debut novel from Bullwinkel (after the collection Belly Up) takes the measure of eight teenage girls as they compete at a boxing tournament in Reno, Nev. The first match features Andi Taylor, troubled by memories of the boy who drowned at a community pool during her lifeguard shift, up against Artemis Victor, who’s from a family of fighters and is looking to show up her accomplished older sister. Next up is oddball Rachel Doricko, whose trademark raccoon-skin hat is just one way she keeps her opponents off-balance, taking on the more pampered, mathematical-minded Kate Heffer. Cousins Iggy and Izzy Lang have more than familial rivalry on their minds when they face off. Lastly, two vicious young Texans— Rose Mueller, a spiritual seeker who’s turned away from the Christian church she was raised in, and Tanya Maw, destined for semistardom—step into the ring to settle their differences. For all the toe-to-toe realism and visceral descriptions of the girls’ blood sport, Bullwinkel’s real interest is in their inner lives and the picture that forms when considered as a whole (“you can send your mind up through the hole of the worlds built by the other girl boxers travel through the layers of different imagined futures, and the different ways each girl has of being”). The fragile lives of her weekend warriors are faithfully portrayed in prose that is intelligible but never commonplace, virtuosic yet grounded. Bullwinkel’s knockout performance mops the floor with rank pretenders. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency.