So Many Olympic Exertions

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.