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    The Motion of the Body Through Space: A Novel
    The Motion of the Body Through Space: A Novel
    The Motion of the Body Through Space: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Motion of the Body Through Space: A Novel

    Written by Lionel Shriver

    Narrated by Laurence Bouvard

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In Lionel Shriver’s entertaining send-up of today’s cult of exercise—which not only encourages better health, but now like all religions also seems to promise meaning, social superiority, and eternal life—an aging husband’s sudden obsession with extreme sport makes him unbearable.

    After an ignominious early retirement, Remington announces to his wife Serenata that he’s decided to run a marathon. This from a sedentary man in his sixties who’s never done a lick of exercise in his life. His wife can’t help but observe that his ambition is “hopelessly trite.” A loner, Serenata disdains mass group activities of any sort. Besides, his timing is cruel. Serenata has long been the couple’s exercise freak, but by age sixty, her private fitness regimes have destroyed her knees, and she’ll soon face debilitating surgery. Yes, becoming more active would be good for Remington’s heart, but then why not just go for a walk? Without several thousand of your closest friends?

    As Remington joins the cult of fitness that increasingly consumes the Western world, her once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist. Ignoring all his other obligations, he engages a saucy, sexy personal trainer named Bambi, who treats Serenata with contempt. When Remington sets his sights on the legendarily grueling triathlon, MettleMan, Serenata is sure he’ll end up injured or dead. And even if he does survive, their marriage may not.

    The Motion of the Body Through Space is vintage Lionel Shriver written with psychological insight, a rich cast of characters, lots of verve and petulance, an astute reading of contemporary culture, and an emotionally resonant ending.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMay 19, 2020
    ISBN9780063007574
    The Motion of the Body Through Space: A Novel
    Author

    Lionel Shriver

    Although Lionel Shriver has published many novels, a collection of essays, and a column in the Spectator since 2017, and her journalism has been featured in publications including the Guardian, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, she in no way wishes for the inclusion of this information to imply that she is more “intelligent” or “accomplished” than anyone else. The outdated meritocracy of intellectual achievement has made her a bestselling author multiple times and accorded her awards, including the Orange Prize, but she accepts that all of these accidental accolades are basically meaningless. She lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for The Motion of the Body Through Space

    4/5

    88 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I just love Lionel shriver’s work. Exciting Plot, Interesting characters, current issue, and a fantastic narrator.
    • 4/5
      Lionel Shriver's writing can be uneven at times, and for the first 70 or so pages this book really wasn't doing it for me, but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did as it turned out to be an entertaining, and at times thought-provoking, read.The couple at the heart of this book are in their early 60s. The wife, who doesn't suffer fools gladly, has been an exerciser all her life, but an impending knee replacement has forced her to slow down. At the exact point that she's reeling from this first major physical setback in her life, her husband, who's recently been sacked and was hitherto somewhat a couch potato, decides to run a marathon.As exercise starts to become an obsession in the husband's wife, helped along by a super fit and super hot twenty-something gym instructor, the once tight marriage starts to unravel.Shriver is good at picking up on the everyday emotions that people experience and weaving the fabric of a story from them. Is the issue stemming from the wife raging with jealousy that her husband is undertaking extreme exercise at a time when she's dealing with her own physical decline, or is it the husband's recklessness and selfishness in taking on a pursuit which is likely physically beyond him at a time when exercising (or not being able to) is a major sensitivity for his wife? It's an interesting view on how something that's seems relatively harmless, such as taking up a new hobby, can drive a wedge in the most solid of relationships as obsession and a self-serving attitude takes over on one side, and jealousy and bitterness takes hold on the other.3.5 stars - an enjoyable, light-hearted read with Shriver's usual razor-sharp observations on the character failings of every day people.
    • 4/5
      Shriver doesn’t disappoint, she always seems to have a finger on the pulse. This novel takes in a number of current themes including ‘cancelling’ ie no longer being able to dislike nasty people if they also happen to be female or disabled or of colour or…. And she also focuses on competitive fitness.The wife in this sounds very much like Shriver herself: perceptive, witty and with a body that is suffering after a lifetime of exercising. While the ‘husband’ character represents all those boomers who have the knowledge & expertise but are being sidled-out as they no longer tick the right-on boxes. And this one takes up an extreme fitness challenge to prove himself & perhaps deny his advancing years.As usual Shriver’s writing is sharp, funny, fearless and thought-provoking.
    • 4/5
      I overall really enjoyed reading this book, sadly though it made me hyper aware of my own aching knees.
    • 4/5
      This is the 6th book I have read by Shriver in the last 3 years. She is one my favorite authors. A very talented "wordsmith" who always seems to be able to use her prose in a creative and entertaining way. In a 380 page novel I try to not miss anything. Because of this talent, I am able to overlook things about Shriver that seem to bother other people. Namely she can be politically incorrect. This main story is about a couple Serenata and Remington who are 60 and 64 when the novel begins. They live in the town of Hudson which isi in New York. Remington has to take an early retirement from his job with the Dept of Transportation in Albany. We know it was under sketchy circumstances but it is not until about a 3rd of the way through that Shriver gets into her strong positions on white privilege, unqualified minority etc as we find out how Remington lost his job. The main story revolves around excessive devotion to physical fitness as Remington decides after a life of sloth to take up running a marathon and then eventually doing an "Iron Man" type triathlon. This is happening just as Serenata after a lifetime of running and doing tons of exercise can longer cut it because of 2 bad knees. The confluence of these events creates hostility between them and is the main story. Shriver again throws all her pet peeve societal grievances(check out Shriver's public persona). Her cast of characters are wonderful and she goes after a ton of things. She may be a little heavy handed on her stereotypical characters but it works. Of course she saves her venom mostly for the slavish devotion to exercise. If you never have read Shriver, then this one is good one to try, but I would go for "The Mandibles" first. You may not agree with her point of you, but there is no doubting her writing talent. I am glad that she has many earlier books that I have not read because I hope to get to all of them eventually.
    • 3/5
      This featured a very smug middle-class couple called (really) Remington and Serenata Alabaster in their early sixties. All her life Serenata has pursued a punishing self-directed exercise regime, which has left her needing two knee replacements, but she is afraid to have the surgeries. Remington, recently retired, decides to run a marathon and then train for the Mettleman challenge. Serenata, forced gradually to give up her exercising, feels Remington's aspirations and training to be absurd and 'commonplace' and then downright dangerous.The tone of this novel is supercilious throughout (there is a lot of mockery of their daughter's Christian faith) and there is a lot of anger. The author throws in side stories (on a topic I know from interviews to be dear to her heart) about how Serenata's voice over work is drying up because she is too white to 'do' black voices, and Remington has been forced into retirement by an incompetent and under qualified black boss, whose focus is on diversity and not town planning. These elements felt forced and made me uncomfortable. It seemed as if anyone who was not for them was very much against them. Few of the supporting characters had nuanced personalities, Bambi being a particular villain. There were also far too many lengthy passages repeatedly musing on Serenata's attitude to Remington's project.The only real moments of joyful humour were when their drug dealing son Declan returned home and he and Serenata were briefly nice to one another. We were told how happily Serenata and Remington had been married, but there was no evidence of this. Their easy and prolonged nastiness to one another puzzled me and then Serenata's actions at the end puzzled me for the opposite reason. Still there is something about Shriver's writing that kept me going to the end.
    • 4/5
      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.