Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

Everything about this book is such a pleasant surprise. I finished it just days before it was long listed for the Booker Prize, and it is very fitting of that particular prize. I found it to be refreshingly new as well as the very best of story telling. The setting is the 12th Annual Daughters of America Cup, held in Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada: a two-day competition of fists and fury, with eight fighters in three knockout rounds. We get into the heads of all eight girls, and we do so first while they are fighting each other. The quarter finals consists of 4 pairs of opponents, the winner moving on to the next round of fighting. The narrative goes back and forth between each girl and also back and forth across their lives, both before and after this fight, and is passed easily from one to another through brief moments of connection--it is like a boxing match in the very best of ways, a graceful dance between the two boxers, and here between their stories. What’s most impressive is how, in a relatively short novel with so many central characters, the author manages to make each girl spark distinctively and sympathetically – even though this means that each tends towards a single overwhelming personality trait, that feature holds true for each girl, from her childhood to the match itself and why she is there, all the way into their future adult selves. It is a thing of beauty to behold.