Rita Bullwinkel Books

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE READS OF SUMMER 2024 Named a Best Book of 2024 by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Time, Elle, Vulture, Lit Hub, and The Guardian “Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competition An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win. Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivate young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.

Belly Up is a story collection that contains ghosts, mediums, a lover obsessed with the sound of harps tuning, teenage girls who believe they are actually plants, gulag prisoners who outsmart a terrible warden, and carnivorous churches. Throughout these grotesque and tender stories, characters question the bodies they've been given and what their bodies require to be sustained. “At the intersection of the surreal and the real, Rita Bullwinkel has carved out a unique space in which the mundane and the strange cohabitate and sometimes frolic. The sharp, precise writing and careful observations of the human condition in her excellent first collection Belly Up signal the debut of a major new talent.” —Jeff VanderMeer “These stunning stories take place in the spaces between ordinary objects and events. They are mysterious, strange, and fearlessly funny in their expression of human isolation, and they contain the existential surprises of great literature. Belly Up is a powerful debut by an unusually gifted writer.” —Lorrie Moore “Bullwinkel's delightful, passionate stories of disturbance and worried words have the best kind of frenetic energy.” —Deb Olin Unferth

Belly Up is a story collection that contains ghosts, mediums, a lover obsessed with the sound of harps tuning, teenage girls who believe they are actually plants, gulag prisoners who outsmart a terrible warden, and carnivorous churches. Throughout these grotesque and tender stories, characters question the bodies they've been given and what their bodies require to be sustained. Ranging greatly in their length, form and tethering to a recognisable reality, the stories of Belly Up collectively question the boundaries of gender, death, and coupling, and all of the supplies, attention, and nutrients that people consume to subsist. Familiar moments - a receptionist becomes fascinated with harp music; two high school girls debate taking gym class; a bored beauty corresponds with an inmate - pivot into unusual investigations of corporeality and selfhood. Fantastical stories - Floridian zombies have a living child; a self-aware snake who eats children has an identity crisis; prisoners perform magical surgeries - find humanity and warmth in the dark grotesque. Full of the variety of the world, in an abundance of resonant sentences and images, Belly Up is the more deeply striking because it is also uncannily natural, observant, and compulsively readable

»Ein so fulminanter Roman, wie ich ihn seit Langem nicht gelesen habe.« Jonathan Lethem »So frisch und stark. Mach Platz, amerikanische Gegenwartsliteratur, für eine tolle neue Stimme.« The New York Times An einem heißen Juli-Wochenende kämpfen in Bob's Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada, USA, acht junge Boxerinnen einen Boxkampf. Alle von ihnen sind noch Teenager, haben Träume und Sehnsüchte und werfen sich mit vollem Einsatz in den Ring. Runde um Runde beleuchtet Bullwinkel das Leben der Mädchen, die gegeneinander antreten: Eine wird von einem unheimlichen Erlebnis als Rettungsschwimmerin verfolgt; eine beruhigt sich selbst, indem sie die Nachkommastellen von Pi aufsagt. Eine hat ein lilafarbenes Muttermal auf der Lippe, das ihre Erfahrungen seit der Kindheit prägt. In starker, muskulöser Sprache entsteht das Porträt von acht jungen Frauen, die in direkter Körperlichkeit alles geben, um gesehen zu werden und den Kampf ihres Lebens für sich zu entscheiden. »Mit einer Sprache, die wie ein Schmetterling schwebt, und Enthüllungen, die wie eine Biene stechen, zieht Bullwinkel die Handschuhe der boxenden Mädchen und der Zeit ihres Aufwachsens aus und breitet sie in all ihrem Wunder, ihrem Humor, ihrer Gewalt und ihrer Herrlichkeit vor uns aus.« Oprah Daily