Serenata Terpsichore and Remington Alabaster are a married couple, trying to navigate their married life, now they have reached their sixties.
Remington, yes, he is named after a typewriter, is retired, not happily so. Serenata still works as an audio narrator, and prides herself on her strength, both physical and mental. Her recent diagnosis of arthritis in both knees, comes as a huge blow. This is exacerbated by Remington’s announcement that he is taking up running, a pastime Serenata is no longer able to partake in.

This is where our story starts, and where the fuel for their daily verbal sparring is sourced. These fiery exchanges are frequent, combative, verbose, and protracted. I enjoyed Serenata’s acerbic observations, her dispassionate views of her family are sharp and barbed.

Lionel Shriver is, without doubt, a talented wordsmith. This cerebral book will give you a mental workout, and give you plenty to think on. At the same time, it is mentally draining, and not a book you can relax within.

I found this book super interesting. The writing was just sublime. .
Thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers for gifting me this book

Really compelling story with fantastic prose. The writing is really the highlight here. I adored the story!

The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver tells the story of Serenata and her husband Remington who are in their early 60s. Serenata has always been a keen runner but has recently been forced to give up due to the state of her knees. She is appalled when Remington decides to run a marathon on a whim, having had a sedentary lifestyle for decades. When a marathon isn’t enough, he turns to triathlons and becomes completely insufferable about it which infuriates Serenata.

Shriver’s dense style of writing is as exquisite and cynical as ever with real satirical bite, particularly on how people automatically associate exercise with moral goodness. However, her forthright views on political correctness and no-platforming feel a bit shoehorned in to the plot at times. It’s not her best book, but should be a satisfying read overall for her fans.

The protagonists of this novel are a couple in their 60s. Serenata has just turned 60, her husband, Remington, is 64, a transport engineer, who had to take early retirement. When he announces he wants to do a marathon, Serenata is incredulous, bemused and somewhat irritated by his zeal, which eventually comes to consume his life. What makes things worse for Serenata is that her knees are not co-operating anymore, she really needs knee replacements, but she dreads the pain and being incapacitated.

Although the book can be funny, the punchline wears thin. The story had the makings of a good romp regarding our weight-fitness obsessed culture, but the satire falls short. This is a quick, easy read, one that you can read in a few sittings but probably don't think about or discuss again in length.

The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Another fabulous book from Lionel Shriver! I really enjoyed this one. It is so often near the truth i found myself wincing and chuckling simultaneously.

The story explores the deep-rooted relationship between Serenata and Remington as their age catches up with them. Serenata is portrayed as having been fiercely competitive all of her life - particularly when it comes to extreme exercise, which she seems to have thrived on. However, at the time of the novel, Serenata requires two knee replacements, which is hampering her physicality. In his enforced retirement, Remington become obsessed with sport: first a marathon and then triathlons, which become more and more extreme in their challenge. Serenata is far from amused at his exploits and this put increasing severe strains on their marriage and finances.

The characters in this book are so accurately portrayed - if you can't see yourself in one of them, you won't need to look far in your own circle of friends and family to find people who espouse similar views and attitudes. The writing is witty and toe-curlingly direct at times. When the reasons for Remington's retirement are revealed, you will be shocked at his naivety. His relationship with his trainer Bambi will leave you shaking your head.

This is a book which examines the human body's deterioration as age sets in. It is not for the faint-hearted, particularly if you enjoy exercise, but you will shake your head knowingly and wisely as you read on. These are not characters that you can always like, but you will recognise them and you will empathise with the situation they find themselves in.

Hilarious and moving. Serenata has been happily married to her husband, Remington Alabaster for many years. When he goes into an enforced retirement, he decides to take up exercise, specifically, marathon running. Extreme marathon running. And it is much to his wife’s annoyance who has always regarded exercise and staying fit as ‘her thing’. But she’s in a bad way with her ailing knees. So she takes his decision to take up fitness as a slap in the face. She’s a bit jealous but has to support him, despite watching him endure terrible injuries. Smartly observed with great characters, it made me laugh and reflect. A fantastic book, thank you.

This was a very good read.

Thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish and could not get enough of.

This is a must read for anyone who enjoys a good thriller!!
Absolutely loved the characters, the plot, the tension -  impossible to put it down.
Certainly recommended!

Like all of Shriver's books, this is addictively readable. I hated everyone in it, particularly the protagonist, with her husband not far behind. It's provocative, meanspirited, arrogant and sneering. But I knew it would be, and I chose to read it anyway, because her writing is so enjoyable to read.

I also love the names she invents - Serenata Terpsichore and Remington Alabaster? Fantastic. I am still rolling them around my mouth a few days later.

My thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the ARC.

I wasn't sure about this book at first but I soon found it engaging. Despite finding pretty much all the characters unlikeable, the book itself was enjoyable. It's a comparison of the cult of exercise as a religion and the drive to compete faster and harder in increasingly difficult and extreme competitions. It's not my favourite Lionel Shriver book but it's worth a read.

In one of my favourite novels, ‘Big Brother’, Lionel Shriver examines people’s relationship to food in an often brutally realistic manner. In this companion piece, Shriver continues to explore her lifelong fascination with the relationship between mind and body. Again, Shriver takes no prisoners as she describes the quasi-religious evangelism of the fitness industry and its delusional attitude to the ageing body. ‘Taken to the nth’, contemplates her main character, Serenata, ‘the church of exercise promised not only the end if not reversal of all aging and infirmity, but eternal life. It was the oldest scam in the world’.

The observation is hard won. Serenata, who is anything but serene when she finds out that she has worn out her knees, had ‘bought wholesale into her generation’s popular myth that the body solely flourishes with use’. Having always prided herself on a life-long, gruelling fitness regime, she feels that she should have earned a reprieve from the self-inflicted ailments suffered by couch potatoes. She is forced to acknowledge, ruefully, that ‘the body is a mechanism, with moving parts that degrade from use’.

At this point, her husband, Remington, decides to train for a marathon and then, having barely avoided an early grave, a triathlon. As Serenata becomes increasingly immobile and bitter, Remington falls under the spell of his ‘sports whisperer’, a stunning personal trainer humorously named Bambi Buffer who encourages Remington to ‘power through’ his injuries and to see Serenata as a negative thinker and ‘catastrophizer’. Remington becomes increasingly sanctimonious and self-obsessed: ‘the world stopped at his skin’. He starts to believe that ‘limits are for losers’ and that the world is divided into supermen and slobs. Humiliatingly, the formerly super-fit Serenata, objecting to the fitness fundamentalists’ language of ‘vainglorious positivism’, finds herself characterised as the ‘Queen of the slobs’.

Finding out what happens to their marriage keeps you enthralled to the last gasp of the ‘MettleMan’ triathlon, a punishingly extreme endurance test that might just kill the over-confident Remington.

Shriver’s superb mastery of idiolects is an absolute joy. Serenata and Remington are great arguers. Serenata is an original thinker and speaker, and through her, Shriver takes a few side swipes at the words ‘intersectionality’, ‘micro-aggressions’, ‘bucket list’, ‘narrative’, ‘core’ (why ‘core’ instead of ‘torso’?) and the ubiquitous ‘curated’. ‘Curated’ is one of my personal bugbears.

I enjoyed this book so much that I read it three times and found something to admire on every page: an original phrase, a stunning observation, a brilliant use of alliteration. Look at the repetition of ‘d’ here, emphasising Remington’s new narcissism: ‘the exigencies of other people’s lives dawned dimly, if at all, and on delay’. Remington joins the ‘cult of tri’ that ‘elevated a select elite over the flabby, the flaccid’, despising the ‘benchwarmers’ ‘popping Pringles’. Or Serenata, struggling to get out of a chair: ‘The segue to a stand was a success’.

There are snappy, economical character snapshots: Valeria, Serenata’s volatile daughter, becomes a member of a church: ‘The evangelicals offered what a mother could not: a mold for Valeria’s Jell-O’. Serenata’s mother, says Serenata disapprovingly, fastened onto social groups ‘like an octopus on speed’. I could quote the whole novel here.

There’s a wonderfully positive conclusion to a novel which is about the relationship between mind and body, from someone who feels that she has wasted too much of her life doing sit-ups: that is, both Serenata and Shriver. An ageing couple, says (the increasingly serene) Serenata, should enter a contract to forgive each other ‘every blobbing mole’, and ‘the sparseness of the hair at the temples’. They should agree not to see these defects, as young people do, as signs that they don’t matter. Separating body and soul, she says, takes ‘affection, and attention, and the long view’. Shriver can be sharp, but she can also be rhapsodic. I’m going to buy a physical copy of this book to help me in the motion of my own body through space.


Thank you so much to NetGalley and HarperCollins for an advanced reading copy of this brilliant novel.

Sadly I struggled with this book. I loved Lets Talk About Kevin and suppose on some level thought it would be written in the same way. I just couldn't seem to connect with the characters or the storyline. There are a huge number of excellent reviews for this book though so I can honestly say its just a book thats not for me and its definitely not that its a bad book. Its well worth a read. .

Thank you Netgalley.

As to be expected with Lionel Shriver, a densely written ‘treatise’ on some matter of current interest and importance. In this case, the obsession with fitness taken to the extreme. Like other novels I have read by her, there are no characters you can actually like, but you can certainly recognise aspects of all of them in people you know - and yourself. She nicely skewers the pretensions and ulterior motives of those who make their livings from the fitness industry, whatever the harm done to those who find themselves caught up in the madness of trying to keep up, even if their own health might suffer.

Lionel Shriver is like the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead.. When she's good, she's really very good, but when she's bad she's horrid. After several books that could be said to belong to that latter category The Motion of the Boy Through Space is at last a return to form. A scabrous and scathing satire of the fitness industry, and our personal obsession with exercise, this book is easily her funniest and most relevant since We Need To Talk About Kevin.

Wow! This was my first Lionel Shriver and boy, it will be the first of many. Not a single word is wasted; she is an incisive, intelligent, hard hitting writer.
The Motion of the Body Through Space is satirical, yes. It takes our current obsession with fitness and pushing ourselves harder and harder to glorious places of hilarity, it takes a harsh look at religion in the same way - there is much to chuckle at.
This book though, is so much more - a marriage in its twilight years, tested to its limits. A potentially dislikeable protagonist, who you can't help but root for during her late in life journey of self discovery; a disconnected family and a myriad of secondary characters where Shriver gives just enough for you to care about them.
I loved it, some of the conversations that Serenata & Remington have are uncomfortable to read - they challenged my own prejudices; reminiscent of the chats that you have with your partner when nobody else is listening - when you are safe and free of judgement.
Highly recommend, my only problem now - is which Lionel Shriver should I read next?!

This is the story of Serenata and Remington, a couple in their sixties, as Remington goes through the travails and tortures of trying to become a MettleMan. I thoroughly enjoyed every line of the book which told the story through the eyes of Serenata in a somewhat cynical and amusing way. It put me in mind of John Updike's Rabbit tetralogy and Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe novels except with more dry humour.

This book is not for everyone... and I am probably one of those people that it is not for. I loved, loved, loved We Need to Talk About Kevin. I've learnt that that doesn't necessarily mean I like Shriver as an author. Shriver is a great writer, don't get me wrong. She has a razor sharp wit and her command of a narrative is strong. But there was just something off about this one for me.

I found TMOFTBTS hard work to get through. Kevin could be the same at times but ultimately the pay off was worth it. I didn't get that same sense from this book. I couldn't get invested in the story or the characters. I found it pretty relentless. As a piece of satire it is fantastic, but I think its message might have been better served by a short story. I sort of felt beaten over the head by it in novel form.

I don't regret reading it. I got to the end relatively easily. But I can't see myself picking it up again.

This is a book that has divided opinions, and in honesty, I can see why. I didn’t really enjoy the first half of the book at all. I found near enough all of the characters insufferable and whilst some of the philosophising was amusing in a cynical kind of way, it quickly became tedious and repetitive. I got that Serenata hates everyone and despises mass conformity, there were only so many times I wanted to read about it. Where the book really turned a corner for me was well after the 50% mark, closer to 75% in fact, when the prodigal son comes home and is an absolutely hilarious breath of fresh air. But let’s be brutal, if this hadn’t been an ARC I wouldn’t have got that far. I’d have put it down long, long before.

I suspect the crucial issue with this novel is that it’s a one trick pony; it’s a satire with a central theme that keeps getting hammered at you again and again and again. And perhaps if you’re really into the mass fitness theme, then that wouldn’t be such a problem. But if you’re one of the majority, then it will largely fall flat. It there were some characters you could empathise with, or enough narrative threads that all the eggs don’t fall into that one basket, then there might be enough to save it. Don’t get me wrong, at times this book is actively funny, but the joke wears thin after the first fifty pages but continues to be hammered at you all the way through the afterword. It even manages to be touching at points; the descriptions of the final competitors crossing the finish line of the most gruelling challenge of their lives actively sent shivers down my spine.

Shriver does some things very, very well. Her depictions of the stresses of aging and the toll it can take on relationships were very well portrayed. I particularly appreciated the relationship between Serenata and her husband’s elderly father, but it’s a pity that such a minor character was one of the most relatable and fully realised. Unfortunately, few other characters hit that bar; Serenata is a cynical, snide older woman who sees the worst in everything and everyone, Remington’s absolute obsession with his new fitness craze completely overshadows every other element of his character. Bambi is an utterly two dimensional fitness nut who cares about nothing but her reputation and the money rolling in; any questions you might have had about her character are put to rest when she propels an injured sixty year old into a triathlon, with no concern for his welfare. The rest of the tri group aren’t much better.

I actively, really enjoyed about a quarter of this, the last quarter. I struggled through the first half and would likely have given up if I hadn’t received a free review copy. I was slightly more invested from the half way mark, but it wasn’t until Deacon came in that I really found myself carried along. The cyclical mockery of the fitness industry and the extreme sports grew old quite quickly, it certainly wasn’t enough to carry the novel in its entirety. The one trick pony just wasn’t enough. More effort was needed in the characters - a novel needs to have at least one main character I can vaguely relate to, even if I don’t particularly like them. There were a handful of side characters who fit that criteria, but with their sparse page time, that wasn’t enough.

All in all, not a winner for me. I think I’ll stick to Shriver’s non satirical works in future.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my free review copy of this title.

“Okay, boomer...”

Serenata has always been a fitness freak, no day complete without its allocated hours of exercises and running. So much so that, now she has reached sixty, her knees have given up the unequal struggle and forced her to learn to take things easy. Still trying to come to terms with this, she finds it rather cruel and insensitive when her husband Remington decides that, after a lifetime of sedentary laziness, he will run a marathon. Besides, she hates the new culture of fitness sweeping the country – when she started her punishing regime all those years ago, she was unusual, and that was a large part of the charm. Now when she’s out cycling it seems half the world is there alongside her, and for her running was always something you did on your own to get fit, not in crowds for pleasure. Plus, is there just a little jealousy in there? Serenata has never run a marathon… not that she wanted to, of course, but still. She is honest enough to admit to herself that she thoroughly resents Remington’s new-found enthusiasm…

This is my first Shriver so I don’t know how it compares to her other books. This one is written with a great deal of humour from the perspective of a grumpy older woman struggling to take modern attitudes seriously and derisive of the hubristic belief of the young that they have somehow invented anti-racism and feminism and know all the answers. Anyone who reads my tweets or reviews may not be too surprised to learn that this resonated strongly with me! Shriver mercilessly mocks the worst of political correctness and the ridiculous extremes of identity politics which have made us wary even of referring to ourselves as men or women for fear that that will offend someone somewhere somehow, or of inadvertently using a term that was considered not just acceptable but progressive five years ago but is now apparently an indication of some hideously unforgivable Neanderthal attitude. Poor Serenata gets very tired of people assuming that because she’s white, middle-class, middle-aged and straight, that that automatically must mean she’s racist, homophobic and downright stupid. Oh, Serenata, I feel your pain!

Remington, meantime, is going through a mid-life crisis, complete with an infatuation with another woman, his fitness coach. Serenata realises that her open mockery of his marathon ambition is driving a wedge into their long and happy marriage, so tries her best to show him support. Shriver is very funny about the whole fitness industry, where one marathon is no longer enough – people have to run at least four, consecutively, in a desert, if they want respect these days. To her horror, Remington is not satisfied by his marathon. Instead he now decides he wants to do the Mettleman Triathlon – a gruelling all-day race involving cycling, swimming and running. Serenata feels this may literally kill him, but her earlier ridicule means Remington puts her warnings down to mere petulance. Will he survive? Even if he does, will their marriage survive? Does Serenata even want it to?

I don’t know how young people will react to this – it may be making too much fun of subjects they erroneously think they own. But as someone roughly the same age as Serenata, I found it sharp and perceptive, and hilarious. I’m sure when I was young I was just as convinced my elders were all idiots, but now that I’m old I can see that the young have their fair share of idiocy too, and I look forward gleefully to the day when the youth of today are old (as they will be, sooner than they think) and are being told by their grandchildren’s generation that they failed in everything and know nothing about anything. Serenata is an unlikely heroine, but I’m sure she speaks for many of us who have spent a lifetime fighting all the ’isms only to find ourselves derided, dismissed, patronised or ignored by those who benefit every day from our achievements – even for many who would never admit it for fear of not seeming groovy/cool/woke/insert-latest-self-congratulatory-buzzword-here.

So, highly recommended for grumpy older women everywhere, and please feel free to call me Serenata from now on… *smiles sweetly*

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, HarperCollins, via NetGalley.

Lionel Shriver is a controversial figure but I am a big fan of her writing and so was delighted to receive a review copy of her latest book via NetGalley.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to get past more than a third of this one. I suspect it may be the difficulty of reading such a narrative during these challenging 2020 times. The main characters, a husband and wife are very spikey and covertly compete with each other. This is not a surprise - the overall theme of the novel is an examination of society’s obsession with fitness. I think I would normally enjoy this kind of narrative tussle, but it is just not the kind of reading I can take at the moment.