Book Review: The Motion of the Body Through Space

This was my 7th Lionel Shriver book. Love them all, this one was no exception.

Time for a book review! This one took me a while to read and I’m not sure why. I started and then set it down but not out of boredom. I loved it from start to finish. My slowness in completing the book is a reflection of my own lack of focus, not the quality of the novel. This one is Lionel Shriver’s 2020 book The Motion of the Body Through Space. As anyone who reads my Substack knows, I’ve never read a Shriver book I didn’t like. And I’ve read a lot of them. I keep waiting for one that is just meh but it hasn’t happened yet.

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In Lionel Shriver’s The Motion of the Body Through Space, Serenata and Remington Alabaster have been married for decades in a comfortable but increasingly tense suburban life in Hudson, New York.

Remington, recently forced into early retirement due to an H.R. snafu, announces his intention to train for an ultra-marathon called “MettleMan”— an Iron Man like grueling triathlon-style endurance event. (It’s Iron Man with a pull up at the end and a very cult like following that mirrors CrossFit.) His transformation from a sedentary, slightly paunchy man into a fitness-obsessed zealot throws their long marriage into upheaval. And is the back drop for the entire book.

Serenata, who has always prided herself on her own disciplined fitness regimen and sharp intellect, watches with a mixture of disbelief, resentment, and physical envy as her husband dives headfirst into the cult of extreme exercise — complete with a charismatic young female trainer who becomes his guru.

Serenata is annoyed enough when Remington announces in the first few pages of the book that he is training for a marathon, never having run a mile. She is, in fact, seething with resentment and not hiding it, at all. She has been the fitness junkie for years, though never achieved marathon finisher status. Now she is sidelined due to a bum knee and is livid that her husband who had never shown any interest in fitness activities at all, is taking over her role in the marriage/partnership precisely when she can no longer go the distance. She only hopes that upon completing the marathon — or not — that he will set this new obsession aside.

No such luck. He finishes in a snail’s pace time of nearly 8 hours and decides to graduate to the next level of training anyway — an extreme challenge that involves a 2-mile swim, a 100+ mile bike ride AND a marathon with a signature pull up at the end. Keep in mind, Remington is 64 and has never participated in moderate fitness activities let alone anything this extreme.

Serenata is annoyed to say the least. When Remington hires a trainer named Bambi who believes in ignoring injuries to complete these insane tests of human limits, Serenata is driven to open bitterness. But Remington is flattered by Bambi’s attention — she knows where her money comes from and if she has to flatter the ego of an aging man, then she’s gonna do it.

To add insult to injury, Remington is dedicating so much time to his training that his attentions are no longer centered around Renata (they’ve always been a unique pair, enjoying each other’s company to the exclusion of friends and even their own children) and his thinking is no longer centered around his usual intellectual musings, which Renata may have found a tad boring but not as boring as the never-ending prattle about the grit required to complete these extreme races. The anti-intellectual nature of his pursuits is a 180 from what he’s spent the decades of their marriage thinking about. And Renata is not charmed by the sudden shift.

Is Serenata being petty? Yes, a bit. Is it realistic? Absolutely. We’ve all got petty resentments in our bones and they are the least flattering part about us all. And this is where Shriver’s writing always soars. In her ability to bring us characters who are good and true but display some unflattering behaviors in their arc.

What begins as a domestic comedy of midlife reinvention quickly deepens into something richer. Shriver, in her usual expert fashion, creates characters that are interesting and compelling though unlikable in their worst moments — which is precisely what makes them feel so real. Serenata and Remington are prickly and often petty, yet they remain magnetically human.

On one level, the book is a meditation on today’s fitness culture and identity through the lens of physical performance. Shriver compares the modern obsession with marathons, metrics, and “personal bests” to a replacement for religion — replete with its own sacraments of sweat and suffering, redemption through finishing times, and blind faith in the gospel of self-optimization.

But at its heart, the book is a poignant exploration of aging and marriage. What happens when we are no longer the focus of the world’s concerns? When our bodies no longer serve us as reliably as they once did?

Serenata, whose self-regard has long been tied to her looks, discipline, and physical capability, must confront the betrayal of her own failing knees. And her own fallibility. And mortality.

Remington’s frantic athletic reinvention raises additional questions: How do we transition gracefully into this later stage of life when the world stops noticing us quite so much? When the currency of youth, strength, and attractiveness depreciates, what remains? When goals and striving are in the rearview, how do we continue to have meaning in our lives? And can the marriage built over decades — layered with resentments, shared history, and quiet interdependence — sustain us when everything else falls away?

Shriver’s characters are amazing in their nuance. She has an extraordinary ability to write human beings who are not altogether good or bad, but always interesting and unique and worth knowing more about. These complex figures are matched with a pacy, propulsive plot that makes for a compelling read, all while tackling social issues with a one of a kind viewpoint that is provocative and unsentimental, and generally “heterodox.”

The Motion of the Body Through Space is sharp, funny, and moving. As always with Lionel Shriver, it’s very much worth reading. I think what I liked about it most — without giving too much plot away — is that even when we fail, we can recover and find our way back to our spouses and ourselves, even if that self is altered through failure and life’s travails.

I liked it so much I’m sticking with Shriver for my next read. On to So Much For That (2010). Let you know how that one goes.

(Side note: all of her books are so rich with both interesting characters and lively plot lines, I don’t know why they aren’t all movies! C’mon — I know Shriver’s books and views veer from Hollywood’s leftie preferences, but the movies would be sooooo good! Alas, since she has revealed herself to be a heretic my hopes are dim that my favorite books will become films, other than the one that already has — We Need To Talk About Kevin.)