Headshot vs. To The Lighthouse
Feeling like main characters when we're really just rocks in the river of time
A few weeks ago, someone asked me my thoughts about predetermination, to which I said something along the lines of, “The past is fake, the future doesn’t exist yet and the present is so evanescent as to be impossibly slippery, soooooo…” followed by an awkward silence. I’m aware that this isn’t really an answer, BUT it is relevant to today’s books!
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (2024)
I’m usually extremely slow at reading new releases, but everything I heard about this one made it sound incredibly rad and perfectly suited to my interests, so thanks to the power of early eBook holds on Libby I managed to read it in a relatively timely manner!
Headshot takes place over a weekend, where eight teenage girls compete in the Daughters of America Cup for the prize of a plastic trophy and the title of “best girl boxer in the country.” Bout by bout, we’re transported stream-of-consciousness style into their heads. One’s fighting to outdo her sister. Another’s fighting because she idolizes her cousin. Yet another’s fighting just to prove she’s good at something.
Headshot is immersive and heartrending and profoundly badass. It captures the emotional intensity of adolescence, of wanting desperately to already know who you are, of inventing ways to make sense of the real and imagined agonies of the world while feeling that everything matters so much and so little all at once.
But I’m burying the lede a little, because what really sets Headshot apart is the writing. It’s painfully and perfectly specific, weaving between the boxers’ traumas and triumphs, stacking their souls on top of each other in a monument to a time in their lives that may warp or fade as they get older but is everything right now. Present blurs with past blurs with future, but there’s rarely a predictable winner. There’s a victory at the end, of course, but it feels less significant than the timeless pattern the tournament becomes a part of: the brutal, battering, beatific experience of creating the self.
READ IT if your feelings about girlhood are less Otessa Mosfegh and more Judith beheading Holofernes.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
I can’t say this is my favorite book by Woolf (Orlando is funnier) but it certainly gave me a lot to think about!!
To The Lighthouse is about the Ramsay family’s vacation, starting off with a debate about whether or not to visit a nearby lighthouse. It’s also about the subjectivity of time, unspoken family dynamics, what it is to be a woman, to be creative, to change.
The book is split into three parts: Part I is vignettes from the family’s vacation, specifically visits from a few friends and a spectacularly awkward dinner party. We watch it all through Mrs. Ramsay’s perspective, getting lost in her fears and frustrations, her hopes for her children, her domestic scheming.
Part II is called “Time Passes,” and in my opinion it’s what makes the book worth reading. Ten years pass in the same amount of space as a few days did in Part I. Mrs. Ramsay dies in the span of a sentence. Two of her children do, too. The world descends into war. The vacation home falls into ruin. Plants grow, animals live and die, seashores shift. Here is a new way of thinking about time, and about human experience. Catastrophe, suffering and death are all-consuming to people, but the universe operates on a much more expansive timescale.
And then we return to Part III, in which the family reconvenes ten years later for a second attempt to make it to the lighthouse. And they finally do! Awwww.
READ IT if you’re looking for a beach read that will intimidate everyone else on the beach.
Pairing Notes
Past, present and future
Both books dip in and out of characters’ heads, flowing between their streams of consciousness and exploring their present actions and mental states through the lens of their pasts - and their futures. It’s beautifully done, surprisingly propulsive and oddly relatable.
The action’s in your head
So much of the action happens in the characters’ heads: their reminiscences, imaginings, hopes, dreams, fears. Both of these books are ideal examples of how emotional action can be just as engaging as physical action.
The significance of insignificant moments
There’s nothing glamorous about the tournament in Headshot. It’s sparsely attended, the judges are only there because they’re being paid, and none of the adults in the room understand what this means to their daughters or granddaughters. But for the competitors, it’s everything: not because it really changes their lives in any way, but because it’s something they want with the fierceness that only a teenage girl can. What makes the tournament significant is what it means to them, not what it means to the world.
Similarly, nothing momentous happens in To The Lighthouse. War and death happens off-page. Action-wise, all we get is a lot of conversation and a lot of thinking. But those are the moments that crystallize who each character is, their misbeliefs about the world, and their potential for transformation.
Time passes and maybe in the grand scheme of things none of it’s important, but the smallest moments are what shape each person’s inner world. And that’s important in its own way.
In Conclusion…
In hindsight I wouldn’t actually call this book combo bizarre - I think they make a lot of sense together! But I did read both books and formulate some thoughts, so please give me a little credit.
Also, happy summer!