Flauschbuch reviewed Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
Overrated
2 stars
There's a lot of praise for this book, including from a feminist perspective. I don't get that at all. The book is written in an annoying style where a lot of sentences start with the full name of the girl. It gets very tiring after a while. Their backstories are mostly told via flashbacks they're having while in the ring, up to hallucinating people from their past (also during a boxing match). Their inner monologue makes them come off as very pretentious (I mean, I was a pretentious teen but I got nothing on them) or just weird. There's also a kind of mean streak throughout this book - even though the boxing tournament is supposed to be an important one, there's no audience, the venue is run-down, the referees and the trainers are uninterested. It doesn't reflect my (short-lived) experience with boxing more thant 20 years ago at all, …
There's a lot of praise for this book, including from a feminist perspective. I don't get that at all. The book is written in an annoying style where a lot of sentences start with the full name of the girl. It gets very tiring after a while. Their backstories are mostly told via flashbacks they're having while in the ring, up to hallucinating people from their past (also during a boxing match). Their inner monologue makes them come off as very pretentious (I mean, I was a pretentious teen but I got nothing on them) or just weird. There's also a kind of mean streak throughout this book - even though the boxing tournament is supposed to be an important one, there's no audience, the venue is run-down, the referees and the trainers are uninterested. It doesn't reflect my (short-lived) experience with boxing more thant 20 years ago at all, and women were a lot less common in boxing than now. There's also a remark early on (and another one later) which made me question how much research Bullwinkel has actually done about boxing. One of the girls is supposed to have her fingers broken several times despite her career maybe being 4 years long. The first thing you learn when you start boxing is how to properly protect your hands - how to tape them for stabilisation and how to punch correctly. Also, the most common hand injuries in boxing are to the wrist and fractures just above the fingers. It made me question her description of Reno, too. I would have DNFed it if it wasn't so short. The ending saves it a little. But still, definitely not recommend.