So Many Olympic Exertions

by Trudareal

Overview

Blending elements of memoir and sports writing, Anelise Chen’s debut novel is an experimental work that perhaps most resembles what the ancient Greeks called hyponemata, or “notes to the self,” in the form of observations, reminders and self-exhortations. Taken together, these notes constitute a personal handbook on “how to live”––or perhaps more urgently “why to live,” a question the narrator, graduate student Athena Chen, desperately needs answering. When Chen hears news that her brilliant friend from college has committed suicide, she is thrown into a fugue of fear and doubt. Through anecdotes and close readings of moments in the sometimes harrowing world of sports, the novel questions the validity of our current narratives of success.
Anelise Chen earned her BA in English from UC Berkeley and her MFA in Fiction from NYU. Her fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, Gawker, NPR and elsewhere. She currently teaches writing at Columbia University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781885030351
Publisher:	Kaya Production
Publication date:	06/27/2017
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	307,840
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.70(d)

Editorial Reviews

06/05/2017
The narrator of Chen’s experimental, shape-shifting debut is Athena Chen, a doctoral student of sports scholarship in NYU’s department of American studies. Having exceeded the seventh year of a doctoral program, Athena is confronting dilemmas regarding her academic pursuits when she learns about the suicide of an ex-boyfriend. Though it’s been years since Athena’s last contact with Paul, the news adds fuel to her growing internal strife. A former competitive swimmer, Athena makes it a mission to “keep going” with her goals, engaging in self-improvement drills and drawing on her knowledge of sports as a multipurpose metaphor for life’s obstacles. The book becomes most consequential in its latter half, when Athena returns to her childhood home in California for the summer. The focus sharpens around the Chen family, and the protagonist comes to terms with the loss of her friend. The plot is enriched with a thread about immigration, concerning the narrator’s Taiwanese heritage and the struggles it entails. The current of the narrator’s thoughts and obsessions holds the fragmented, stop-and-start narrative together. Formally unique and inventive, this novel fluctuates in tone, reading at some times like an authentic and unfiltered private journal and at others like a deeply researched academic essay. Often it flows organically into meditative territory, while combining images in a manner reminiscent of the work of authors such as W.G. Sebald or Ben Lerner. This ambitious book is sure to appeal to fans of Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?—it similarly challenges the expectations regarding the rules a novel ought to follow. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly