I wouldn't wish the circumstances of this book's mild success on any author, especially not one swimming in the quietly abrasive and untested skill of Bullwinkel. A well-deserved but uncharacteristic (and obviously zeitgeist-eyeing) Booker longlisting that gets you an audience of nothing but box-checking GoodReads completists with no interest in your book past being another figure for their yearly counts and listicles, landing her work neatly in the 'I disengaged from the book I was reading 10 pages in' W. S. Burroughs scoring bracket. Many people who think they're clever in the reviews, plunging no deeper than calling the book about boxing 'punchy.' There may be some truth to that in the rigorous and repetitive language, an unyielding onslaught of blows trying to squeeze past the upheld guard of the reader. But if marriage exists between this prose and the sport it describes, it's in the back-and-forth dance before a blow is thrown, the mutual sizing up, the (as Bullwinkel so well puts it) projected invisible conversation between the athletes.

What I see this as (and you'll have to forgive me for what is, at the very least a little bit, Boss Baby-ing) is Calvino with a less grandiose stage for the metaphysics. Khan and Polo recognise themselves as extensions and representations of ideas, and their conversations knowingly hold the weight of all places and lives within them. These girls only see themselves, but that isn't all they are. Their pasts, presents, goals, and wants all collapse with gravitational force, entire prospective lives and persons thrown behind the weight of a single blocked jab. A musty gym sparkling with effervescent dust particles lit by the dimming light of day, weakly dribbling through a sunroof, four walls occupied by every thought ever to be had, a symphony of skin and sweat. So many stories and forces drive these young women to trade their bodies for a glimpse at imagined futures that you watch dissolve and reform in real time. She wins not because she has the most dramatically satisfying story, the most motivation, the most consequential life, the most tragedy, the most nerve, the most artistry, or the most definitional experience with boxing. She wins because she punches smarter and better than everyone else.