Lionel Shriver is so smart, and so observant, and those qualities power this book from start to finish. A darkly hilarious take on the fitness industry, interwoven with the discomfort of aging, white Boomers.

n their 60's Serenata and her husband Remington are adjusting to the change of relocating to a new town; unemployment for one and reduced working hours for the other, and coping with the physical changes that come with aging.
Shriver is a brilliant writer and the witty repartee between husband and wife are amusing although the conversations go on for a bit too long. That changes when Remington, who was forced out of his job with the DOT years before he was ready, begins training for a marathon and later a triathalon. While Serenata has always exercised on her own for years before it became trendy, worn out knees have recently caused her to become more sedentary. Remington has never worked out and is not a natural athlete causing Serenata to resent the time, expense and social hours spent with his workout instructor and teammates.
As the plot begins to slow, we meet the couple's adult children who have been described as misfits, making Serenata question her parenting skills. The children bring another dimension to the story and we see the couple through the eyes of someone other than Serenata.
After more mishaps than successes, both Serenata and Remington learn to live with the good and bad aspects of aging and gain a tender appreciation for each other.
I'm a fan of Lionel Shriver's and was fortunate to receive an advance copy of The Motion of the Body Through Space from NetGalley. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it.

When the main character is named Remington Alabaster and his wife is named Serenata Terpsichore, you know in in for quite a novel. Despite the number of novels Shriver has written this is the first, and it is not going to be the last. Remington has decided at the age of 64 that he’s going to run a marathon. Well, ol’ Serenata thinks he’s crazy. “You’re going to be a real bitch about this?” and they go about proving he’s right. Mostly the book is about Serenata needing to be first in doing anything from wearing Uggs to inventing exercise. Serenata is not a happy woman, but she has many reasons not to be happy.

Serenata Terpsichore and Remington Alabaster have been married for over 30 years. They have raised two children, weathered the storm of Remington's forced early retirement, and generally had an extremely happy life together. They enjoy each other's company more than they do anyone else's (including their children). For her entire adult life, Serenata exercised for 90 minutes daily, running and cycling and doing calisthenics, not out of any fanaticism, it was just part of who she is. Things changed for Serenata when she turned 60 and discovered that years of daily exercise had damaged her knees to the point of needing knee replacements in both knees unless she wanted to live with constant pain. Around the time she resigned herself to giving up running, her husband Remington decided that he wants to run a marathon, something even Serenata had never done. As he trains for his big run with a new group of friends, Serenata wonders how much of her husband's decision was aimed at her, now that she was unable to pursue her hobby, and to get back at her for all the time she spent exercising.

It took me about 25% of the book to get into the story; after that point, I was interested enough in the dynamics between the characters to continue and finish the book. There are interesting parallels between Remington and his newfound fanaticism about exercise, and their adult daughter Valeria who has been sucked into a fundamentalist religious group - both groups have cult-type overtones. The story also gives a look at the big-business aspects of marathons and triathalons. I have read several other books by Lionel Shriver, and this one lands somewhere in the middle.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in return for a review.

Lionel Shriver's writing is beautiful, as always. The parallels she weaves throughout the novel's characters and situations are smart and not overexplained. This was a successful satire as well as an introspective on our contemporary exercise culture. The idea of what we worship and how represented in exercise is an apt analogy that will appeal to a variety of readers, whether they like and practice exercise or not. I will assert that Shriver did not write this novel to be taken as realistic fiction; it is a reflection on relationships, how relationships and people themselves age, parenting, and solitude. I highly recommend this novel for any thinking individual.

Thank you to Harper Collins Publishers and NetGalley for this ebook to read and review.

I love this author and I loved this book. Serenata and Remington are a couple in their early 60s, wondering what lies ahead of them. Remington decides to take up running just as Serenata has had to give it up due to problems with her knees. This causes tension in the relationship which grows as he becomes more obsessive with his fitness. Maybe because of my age, the whole book worked for me. If I were an amazing writer, I could have written it (well, at least thought about it). It made me laugh, it made me cringe, it made me sigh, it made delight in each page. Especially the afterword. It captured the aging process in a way that made me read it more than twice, because it felt so personal. This is a book I will recommend to many of my friends.

Published by Harper on May 19, 2020

Lionel Shriver is known for picking a social trend and exploring its ramifications by building a novel around it. In The Motion of the Body Through Space, the trend is exercise, or as one character calls it, “the fetishization of fitness.” While it lasts, fitness can be a great thing, although like so many great things, it can also lead to smugness and a sense of moral superiority — I’m fit and you’re fat. The novel might be read as an indictment of self-righteous people who judge or condemn those who criticize their behavior. People who question slavish devotion to exercise, for example, are ridiculed as envious slugs, while those who criticize laziness are scorned as fitness freaks. But the novel explores more than the lifestyle of extreme exercise. Its ultimate subject is aging and the inevitable decay that no amount of fitness training can defeat.

As Shriver makes clear, we enjoy the illusion that we are in control of our bodies, but “only at the body’s behest” do we exist at all. Some people hate their bodies, an antagonism that grows “into the central battle of their lives.” Others are happy with their bodies until they fail, which they ultimately will. All it takes is “a moment of clumsiness on the stairs or a bad oyster” to come undone. If nothing else, age will rob the body of its vitality. One point of Shriver’s novel is that nothing lasts, that healthy bodies will inevitably be overtaken by decay and disease. All that smugness might one day be — like so many other things — a source of regret.

Unlike her husband, Serenata Terpsichore has always exercised regularly — to the point where, at 60, she is contemplating a knee replacement. Serenata is an insular, self-contained person. She has always resented it when something she enjoys doing becomes trendy. If she discovers a band or a kind of footwear, she hates knowing that “whatever you claimed for yourself would be adopted by several million of your closest friends. At which point you either abandoned your own enthusiasm or submitted numbly to the appearance of slavish conformity.”

Serenata is married to Remington Alabaster, probably because he is the only other human whose company she finds tolerable. Remington thinks Serenata wants “to hog all the benefits” of her habits and can’t abide anyone else enjoying them. To Remington, Serenata’s “lack of communal ties is a little chilling,” but Serenata has “no desire to melt into some giant pulsating amoeba.”

Serenata and Remington have a daughter named Valeria who largely ignored them before deciding that she forgave them for unspecified wrongdoing. Now Valeria wants to save their souls with born-again fanaticism. Their son Deacon, on the other hand, was apparently born evil and has no desire to change. Deacon plays a relatively small role but he’s the only likable character in the novel. Remington bemoans the fact that their kids grew up to be white trash. Serenata and Remington can at least bond over their failure as parents.

The first third of the novel addresses Remington’s training and participation in a marathon, which Serenata not-so-secretly views with derision. During the marathon, Remington meets and later hires a sexy fitness trainer who uses the professional name Bambi Buffer. Bambi encourages Remington to complete the marathon and then to move on to the latest trend, triathlons. Training is important, Remington decides, because “Life comes down to nothing more than the motion of the body through space.” “Traversing distances,” in his view, is “all there is to do.”

Most of the characters suspect Serenata of undermining Remington out of envy. With a gimpy knee, she can no longer compete with runners, and she doesn’t look as hot on her bicycle as the gear-clad babes. Serenata, on the other hand, justly worries that something catastrophic will happen to Remington, given that he is in no condition (and never will be) to compete in a triathlon. I give Shriver credit for being fair to both perspectives. Serenata might not understand why Remington feels a need to prove himself, and Remington might not understand why Serenata is so unsupportive, but the reader will understand them both.

At some point, the story detours to provide a surprisingly contrived explanation of how Remington lost his government job to political correctness. Her reliance on superficial caricatures rather than her customary deep probe of an issue is disappointing. Some of the points made by Remington and Serenata are sound — of course we shouldn’t automatically believe accusations of workplace abuse or harassment simply because they are made, and employers often rely on pretexts to fire aging employees before they qualify for a full pension — but the allegations of work rule violations that gave Remington a new life of leisure, and the questioning he endures (apparently with no civil service protections whatsoever), are so unrealistic that they damage the novel’s credibility. Fortunately, the detour is relatively brief.

Shriver took the risk of writing about two disagreeable characters. Readers who need to like characters to like a book might be turned off by Serenata and her husband. As Remington eventually tells Serenata, she is so separate from others, so disdainful of the need for company and contemptuous of their support, that she seems a creature of self-satisfied intellect, devoid of empathy. She has excluded everyone but Remington, including her children, from her bubble. Remington, on the other hand, is just plain stubborn, which might explain why their marriage has survived. He is also too easily taken in by the hot trainer, although that's a common enough failing of aging men.

So The Motion of the Body Through Space is about fitness and trends and families and the conflict between self and being part of something larger. Readers might draw their own lessons from those themes, but the humility that accompanies aging is the novel’s final lesson. “But this brand of humility wasn’t the sort you graciously embraced. It was foisted on you. You grew humble because you had been humbled.” At the same time, the epiphany that the great benefit of growing old is letting go (i.e., no longer caring about the world’s problems because you know you will die before the apocalypse) is one I hope I never have.

The penultimate chapter reads like a suspense novel as the reader wonders how Remington will fare in his greatest challenge. It is the best part of the novel. The rest of the ride is uneven, like the gravel road on which Remington wipes out while biking. Still, the story is always engaging. I am a fan of Shriver’s work and I enjoyed nearly all of this novel despite hitting a couple of potholes along the path to the novel's conclusion.

RECOMMENDED

I really wanted to like this novel more than I did.....maybe because I judge everything she writes based on "We Need to Talk About Kevin". And there just is no comparison.

The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver is a very highly recommended novel confronting exercise obsession, aging, and the expectations to conform to ever changing arbitrary societal views.

Serenata Terpsichore and Remington Alabaster have been married for 32 years and have two children that have been a disappointment. They recently moved to Hudson, N.Y., after Reminton lost his DOT civil engineering job in Albany. Much to Serenata's surprise, Remington, at age 64, decides to take up running and plans to enter a marathon. Serenata, 60, has always been the runner, the one with an obsessive fitness routine in the family but, after years of use, her knees are now arthritic, ruined, and she's looking at joint replacement surgery. Remington embraces his new exercise routine with a cult-like fanaticism that eventually results in his hiring a trainer named Bambi to help him train for the Lake Placid MettleMan Triathlon. Bambi treats Serenata with disdain - and the feeling is very mutual.

We should probably get one fact out in the open right at the start. I admire Lionel Shriver for her incredible talent and for her stating her unabashed opinion on any and all of the absurd cultural phenomena raging about us. For me she was, as usual, right on topic, observant, clever, and fearless while tackling the opinions that are often suppressed or labeled with some derogatory term now. She is mainly focused on aging and the current cult of exercise, but she also covers long-term relationships, wokeness, offense culture, cultural misappropriation, identity politics, the Me-Too movement, marginalized people, virtue signaling, group-think, and the victim-hood culture.

Serenata and Remington are both well-developed characters that come to life in this novel. No, neither of them is depicted as a saint, but they are definitely realistic individuals with all their faults and foibles clearly on display. Both are succinct and outspoken with each other regarding their opinions. Although my knees are fine, I understand hitting the road block that aging can set before you, so it was clear that they were at odds with their approach to facing it. After exercising on her own with her own routines for years, Serenata had little choice but to accept a more sedentary life, while Remington obsessively took on a monumentous goal that was at odds with her current situation.

The writing is incredible, both precise and flawless. Shriver always uses the absolutely perfect word to describe what she means. She also manages to capture the absurdity of situations and encounters with humor and sarcasm mixed in to the reality. All of the characters may be slightly exaggerated but this is much better to compare and contrast them. They also serve as the perfect vehicle for Shivers prose and opinions. This is an absolutely wonderful novel that could spark some intense discussions at any book club.
I personally saved many quotes from The Motion of the Body Through Space, but want to mention a couple that hit home for me:
"I think what grates about these abruptly ubiquitous expressions.... Meaning, suddenly everyone says it.... It’s just, people throwing around fashionable lingo think they’re so hip and imaginative. But you can’t be hip and imaginative. You can be unhip and imaginative, or hip and conformist."
"She was too content by herself, and had sometimes wondered if not getting lonely was a shortcoming."
"I dislike her personally. As an individual. Is that possible anymore? Is it legal to harbor animosity toward a specific person who just happens to belong to a 'marginalized community'?"
"What has not changed - what has always been the case with human beings - is that 'feelings' are no more factually sacrosanct than any other form of testimony. So you can 'argue with what people feel.' Because people lie about what they feel. They exaggerate what they feel. They describe what they feel poorly, sometimes out of sheer verbal inadequacy. They mistake one feeling for another. They often have no idea what they feel. They will sometimes mischaracterize their emotions with an eye to an ulterior motive - "

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
After publication the review will be posted on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Social satire at its finest is what this book is. Funny. Tragic. Hysterical. The afterword us worthy of the cost. Loved it

Lionel Shriver's trademark voice--sharp, cynical, incisive and unflinching--shapes every paragraph and twist in this stinging novel which takes a hard look at our obsessions.

The couple is the Alabasters, Remington, and Serenata. They are in their sixties, living in a small town in upstate New York. The last name hits the punch of satire immediately and doesn't let go for the entire novel. Serenata is a loner who does voice work for audible books, infomercials, and video games. She likes working alone, being alone, except for life with her Remington, who is equally as uber-intelligent as Renata. Remington is dismal because he lost his job at the Department of Transportation in Albany. Remington tangled with his boss, a woman half his age who got the top job he perceived as belonging to him.

The Alabasters have two children who do not come into the story for a while, but they are both disappointments. One is a religious fanatic, and the other only shows up for money from time to time. Remington's misery over his forced retirement sets the tone for life in the Alabaster home. Serenata has always done extreme amounts of physical exercise and is now facing knee replacement surgery. I was there with her as she described anecdotal information on the difficulty of recuperation. I have arthritis, not brought on by exercise. LS had me at knee pain, a soul mate in the senior years.

Remington surprises everyone by deciding to take up running. The novel takes off wildly with his head-on dive into the world of extreme athleticism. An hysterical take on a personal trainer, named Bambi, becomes part of the story. Life becomes hell for poor Renata. She may be unlikable as are all Shriver's characters, but she is my sister with exploding knee pain.

Remington becomes as obnoxious as any person clinging to a cult, not heeding any advice but going forward to complete a triathlon. Serenata is not supportive. The MettleMan group tends to hang out at her house after their sessions and Serenata becomes isolated in a way she never imagined, she is without her partner in all this, her Remington.

This newest Lionel Shriver satire is at its best, chronicling just one of the extremes of our society. Why take a walk around the block when you can worship at the church of proving you are more than a mere mortal. It is so much better to risk life and limb to prove something to yourself and fellow cultists.

Lionel Shriver has my vote with whatever she writes. Her gift of writing is there on page one. She faces her demons and riffs on every stereotype out there, even those made at her expense. This new novel is perfect writing and insight into the world of extreme individual training.

Thank you to Lionel Shriver, Harper, and NetGalley for the e-ARC of this novel, to be published on May 5th.

THE MOTION OF THE BODY THROUGH SPACE begins first thing with Remington, Serenata's husband of 32 years, startling announcement that he's decided to run a marathon despite never having been interested in physical fitness.. He becomes obsessed with training for it at the same time that Serenata, 60, is forced to quit her own exercise program of running, swimming and biking due to knee injuries. This imbalance causes friction between the couple as well as witty conversations and observations.

I really could not get into this book. I just skimmed through a lot of it. Maybe I was not in the right frame of mind. I did not feel a relationship with the characters.

Oh, Lionel Shriver. Always worth reading but, for me, sometimes unpleasant. Not, mind you, unpleasant as far as themes. We Have to Talk About Kevin was engaging, propulsive and shocking, all the while with sympathetic characters and page turning suspense. Then there was So Much for That. Promising theme but such unappealing cast of characters. Did not finish, so take that opinion with a grain of salt. Now The Motion of the Body Through Space. Unpleasant people doing unpleasant things with not a glimmer of an answer to the question of why. Why care? Why spend time watching them? I'll keep reading Shriver because she is smart, goes her own way in the face of controversy and serves up The Mandibles or The Post-Birthday World.

In this novel, Lionel Shriver takes a look at the world of extreme sports. A 60-something couple, married for decades and with two grown children, the wife always active with a daily exercise routine and the husband less so. Suddenly, the husband decides to become fit. He almost immediately begins hiring a demanding, aggressive and gorgeous young trainer and begins increasing his workouts to several hours a day, with punishing, grueling routines that result in painful injuries.

The wife resents his uber-fitness, the gorgeous trainer, his new group of fitness-fanatic friends, and the exteme compulsiveness that has overtaken her husband. Amidst this, though, I never got a feeling of love or care between them. They never had any tenderness, only sarcasm and angry exchanges. I couldn't figure out how this couple were together for so many years when they had obvious contempt and competitiveness between them.

The wife begins exercising compulsively, in order to match her husband's new fitness regime, not because she enjoys it. She injures herself. Husband doesn't seem to notice or care. He competes in marathons and extreme challenges and continuously injures himself.

It is really quite a study on what we force ourselves to endure versus our enjoyment of our lives, particularly our later lives.