The Motion of a body through space

After losing his job in the Department of Transportation, where he had been a long-valued employee, 63-year-old Remington Alabaster finds himself in need of a new purpose.
When he informs his wife, Serenata, that he intends to run a marathon some months hence, she is immediately dismissive. Until now, Serenata has been the runner and fitness fanatic in the family. But arthritic knees have forced her to abandon running and severely restrict her exercise routine.
Despite her opposition, Remington takes to his training regime with the zeal of a religious convert, while Serenata clings to the hope that his obsession will end once the marathon is over. That hope is crushed when Remington hobbles over the finish line and announces his new goal to compete in the MettleMan, an ultra-triathlon that pushes endurance beyond normal limits and tests his aging body and their marriage.

From the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin

Allergic to group activities of any kind, all her life Serenata has run, swum, and cycled – on her lonesome. But now that she's hit 60, all that physical activity has destroyed her knees. As she contemplates surgery with dread, her previously sedentary husband Remington, recently and ignominiously redundant, chooses this precise moment to discover exercise.

Which should be good for his health, right? Yet as he joins the cult of fitness that seems increasingly to consume the whole of the Western world, her once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist. Ignoring all his other obligations in the service of extreme sport, he engages a saucy, taunting personal trainer named Bambi, who treats his wife with contempt. When Remington announces his intention to compete in a legendarily gruelling triathlon, MettleMan, Serenata is sure he's going to end up injured or dead – but the stubbornness of an ageing man in Lycra is not to be underestimated.

The story of an obsession, of a marriage, of a betrayal: The Motion of the Body Through Space is Lionel Shriver at her hilarious, sharp-eyed, audacious best.

VERDICT As she has done before in novels such as We Need To Talk About Kevin, Shriver takes on hot-button topics—in this case the fitness craze, toxic workplaces, the tyranny of political correctness, and the indignities of aging