The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So, picture the scenario ... you've been a fitness fanatic all your life, but now, in your sixties, you discover that all those miles spent pounding away have played havoc with your knees, and your body is telling you in no uncertain terms to kick the addiction or risk it giving up on you completely. At the same time, your spouse - recently sacked from his job for failing to understand, never mind live up to, the cautious and placatory behaviour demanded of an ageing white male in today's PC culture - announces that he intends to run a marathon in six months' time. You think it's a ridiculous idea, given that he's only ever run for a bus in his life - he thinks your attitude is sour grapes.
This is the challenge that faces Seranata as her husband Remington develops a new and all-consuming obsession with challenging his sixty-year old body in precisely the way that she's now discovering can cause irreversible damage. And of course, being a man, he's not content with just buying a pair of trainers and running a little further every day, he has to have an 'online schedule' and all the (latest, expensive) gadgets - gadgets that what with his enforced redundancy and her work as a voiceover artist drying up, they can now ill afford.
When Remington, having not-so-successfully limped through his marathon, declares that instead of putting his feet up he's signed up for a full triathlon and introduces Seranata to his new (expensive) trainer, a fundamentalist fitness guru named Bambi, things go from bad to worse. Throw into the mix a born-again Christian daughter, a drug dealer son and an ailing father-in-law who increasingly becomes Serenata's responsibility, and you have a marriage teetering on the brink. Will their relationship survive? More fundamentally, will Remington himself, increasingly gaunt, fevered and accident-prone, survive?

This is a brilliant read, and Lionel Shriver skilfully weaves into the narrative some challenging questions for the modern Westerner - where will the new 'cancel culture' lead us if taken to extremes? Why do the 'baby boomers' generation seem to think they must not allow themselves to grow old? Is punishing one's body through excessive exercise - to no discernible benefit for society at large - the new zealotry, on a par with self-flagellation, extreme fasting and the Judeao-Christian rejection of the physical world?
Maybe, just maybe the boring old adage 'moderation in all things' is the best advice after all....
A rare five stars from me! 🥰



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