The Motion of the Body Through Space

The thing about Lionel Shriver is, I guess, that she's self-deprecating.  She is obviously, also, a contrarian, and that is the quality that comes through most strongly in this book. Shriver takes a contrary view on almost every conceivable aspect and item of received wisdom emanating from the fitness industry.  And this automatically counts as self-deprecation because of Shriver's own personal investment in the values that industry promotes.  We know that this is the case from various interviews Shriver has given over the years, most notably in the New Yorker.

Let's be clear (if I wasn't above): this book is a relentless attack on both the idea and practice of 'pushing yourself to your limits'. The whole idea of limits is critically tested through a series of limit cases devoted, seemingly, to exercise, but who are revealed to be, instead, devoted to self-harm. The freaks Shriver describes are suicidally hell-bent on perfecting their bodies and attaining personal best times that they acquire, along the way a set of life-threatening injuries ranging from: blown knees, heart attacks, suppurating and infectious blisters, kidney failure, fatal head traumas, deep lacerations, internal bleeding/bruises; and much more, all in the context of the ravages of old age that both the main character Serafina Terpsichore and her husband (Remington) are undergoing.

Shriver is trying to take down a few notches the likes of, for example, Alex Hutchinson, whose book Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance Remington is observed reading in bed, and it's funny because the husband is so very far from being an accomplished athlete that he comes to seem like a straw-man, set up to be so very easily knocked down, especially in comparison to the company he keeps: a set of hardcore (and all very much younger and more fit) triathletes.  Their goal: the MettleMan, a brilliantly conceived triathlon 'event' the approach of which structures so much of the tension that is built up so skillfully in the course of this novel's events.



Another straw-person is the young buff personal trainer who latches onto Remington during his first (circa 8 hour) marathon. Her name is Bambi Buffer, and she is of course a dissembling shill of a person, so seemingly representative of much of what is branded as 'good for you' by various representatives of the fitness industry today.  Bambi is the classic 'other woman' but Shriver, with extremely impressive skill, navigates the cliches and pitfalls such a character might represent, with brilliant and darkly funny aplomb (to borrow a turn of phrase Adam Roberts applied to Joe Abercrombie's book A Little Hatred.  Indeed, The Motion of the Body Through Space might quite easily, at times, feel like a good fit into the grimdark fantasy genre).

Underneath the take-down-y language and critical structure of this novel; it is more fundamentally about a marriage, and a very admirable one (a good one!) at that.  Serafina and Remington are enamoured of one another, despite their troublesome children, and various late-mid-life mishaps.  It is one of the latter (Remington's early firing from a company to which he has devoted his life and life's work), that has led to the current crises of fitness and bodily-limits thinking that underly the book's philosophical core.

Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of reactionary material being spewed by Remington and his wife, who at times too thinly seem to resemble Shriver's real-life personae.  There is a massive wedge of anti-'PC' libertarian-inflected political ideology that is quite unbelievable.  Remington's new boss, who usurps his own perceived entitlement to a management position, is a high-born Nigerian woman with a whole-profile of stereotypically progressive agendas that becomes increasingly absurd as it is conveyed through an almost play-like set of recorded dialogues Remington plays back from a workplace tribunal he underwent immediately prior to his firing.  This woman, his new boss, allegedly re-named a street in Albany, New York, 'Robert Mugabe' drive.  Which is kind of funny, but also a bit insulting if we are expected to believe this or that this kind of cardboard character actually exists.

Does this book have a happy ending?  The main character, at the end of the final chapter, has a heart attack and does not finish his race.  His wife, with a fresh knee operation that is trashed through the tribulations of her finding her lost husband, has to undergo the operations again, and is permanently crippled in the process.  But the afterward is a glorious tribute to the wonders and pleasure of old age in the company of a spouse truly and deeply loved and enjoyed, hour by hour, day by day.  It came off a bit hokey, if I'm being honest, but that was probably also part of the satire.

I took the critique of the fitness aspect very seriously, and I am certain it will have a positive impact on my own practices, if not quite anywhere near the extent that Hutchinson's book Endure will, then perhaps in a more subtle way.  The Motion of the Body Through Space is well worth reading.