For those of us who consider ourselves fans there is no sport quite so pure, so outright poetic as boxing, because this simple art of consensual combat offers no place to hide. Unlike other working-class sports such as football, with its amateur dramatics and petty squabbles, or American football and its endless ad breaks, boxing boils it down to the basics: hit and be hit, and in the best fighters we get to see the perfect symbiosis of artistry, strategy and brutality. Humans like to watch violence as much as we like to tell stories, and each fighter brings with them a narrative.

Little wonder, then, that down the years boxing has inspired some of the best sports writing, and we can now add American author Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel to an expansive canon.

Headshot explores a side of boxing that 99% of people never encounter. It’s set at the Daughters of America Cup, a fictional amateur tournament for the best women aged 18 and under, the novel structured round seven qualifying bouts over two July days featuring fighters who each come into the ring fuelled by hope, expectation, trauma, ambition. Events take place in Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada, chosen “because of its central location” – a fact that boxer Andi Taylor, who drives for four days from Florida, might dispute.

Fighting for these young women is something they are trying on for size as a means of self-discovery

Nothing about Bob’s is palatial. Instead, a meagre crowd of two dozen or so fail to fill a dilapidated warehouse, where even the once-gleaming trophies that sit in a cabinet have now lost their lustre to reveal the cracked, cheap plastic from which they are made, the names of their recipients long faded from view.

In fact, everything about this world makes us question why anyone would want to be a part of it – from the entrance fees to the coaches, all of them men with paunches, whom even their own fighters consider “useless, like stoned older brothers getting paid by their parents to chaperone a middle school dance”. Bullwinkel reminds us that for every Floyd Mayweather or Tyson Fury who emerges there are thousands with nothing but crooked knuckles to show for their endeavours – and even then it is still only the names of a few men that echo down the ages. For women the fight is different.

Bullwinkel’s writing is as poignant and visceral as the sport demands, her words inhabiting the thoughts and bodies of her characters: “She saw the red fabric of the glove move under her eyes and in between her shoulders. It was like she was flying over a piece of red fabric. Andi was on top of the red ocean.”

Beauty, brutality and the sheer banality of violence combine, with the rawness of each brawl brought to life in the grubby details of matted hair, reapplied lip gloss, “deep subterranean zits” and staph infections – all at odds with heroic names such as Artemis Victor and Iggy Lang. The eccentricity of the fighting mentality is illuminated, too: Rachel Doricko wears a racoon hat to make her resemble both man and animal, because she believes people are most scared by that which makes no sense to them – in her case, a teenage girl dressed as Daniel Boone. Her opponent Kate Heffer, meanwhile, quietly recites the 50 decimal places of pi that she has memorised in order to impose order upon the chaos of violence.

Here in the sagging ring, young women of wildly differing backgrounds battle to assert their personalities upon their opponents, for if Headshot is about fighting, then it is as much about individuals fighting for their burgeoning selves, for a rightful space in which to exist. Often the fight is within, or with the wider world that awaits them, one in which all young women remain targets.

Bullwinkel tells us what will become of them decades down the line – wedding planner, accountant, grocery store manager – with these brief glimpses serving as jarring reminders that while we may be built on past experiences, we are not necessarily defined by them. Fighting for these young women is something they are trying on for size as a means of self-discovery.

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Beneath swelling eyes, some already know that this will be their last tournament, while for others the madness of combat is too alluring to walk away from. But for two days in an airless space, in the hottest month of the year, all are quietly heroic.

Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury) won the 2023 Goldsmiths prize. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel is published by Daunt (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.