August (Part 1) - theme: Booker Long List
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
This theme was given to me by my Mum, and I put assigned it for August as the booker long list was announced on July 30th. Perfect timing!
First step was to pick which book I wanted to read, and after reading this write-up https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/booker-prize/booker-prize-longlist-publishers-woken-up/ I narrowed it down to headshot, wild houses and creation lake. My mum offered to buy me whichever book I wanted to read and since creation lake was not available yet, she bought me Headshot AND Wild Houses. Thanks Mum!
Sometimes you get an impression that an author is getting better and better the more they practice (Terry Pratchett anyone?). Rita Bullwinkel is not one of those authors. She must have done all her practice off screen because this is a fully formed perfectly concise novel. She doesn't describe the motel the girl boxers are staying in. No, she spends a paragraph describing the eggs at the morning buffet breakfast. The incredible detail with which she paints the eggs allows the reader to see the whole motel in that same detail, we know exactly what that motel will look like, smell like and even what the beds will feel like. It's even better with her characters, the girl boxers, but describing the minutiae of their thoughts during their fights we can extrapolate their whole. I felt I knew each one of these girls when in reality each one had hardly any page time. I loved the snapshots into the future of who they would become, and sometimes where they came from, it just worked perfectly.
This book reminds me of Steven Wilson's song Perfect Life from his Hand Cannot Erase album - in only a few words a whole life can be seen. Atmospheric and sparse writing at its finest.
Oh yeah and it's about boxing, but that's irrelevant.