The Motion of the Body Through Space

"Scabrously funny. . . . presents a dyspeptic view of people in thrall to exercise. . . . Few authors can be as entertainingly problematic as Shriver."

"The prospective thrill of a new novel by the iconoclast Lionel Shriver is located here, in anticipating the skewing of pieties." - Joshua Ferris, New York Times Book Review

"The fitness industry is a fat target for satire. And Shriver brings all her ferocious wit to bear to mock its hucksters and disciples." - Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Painfully funny . . . much of it rings true." - Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Provocative and witty . . . the need for us all to stop moving for a moment and reflect on where we are is Shriver's main subject." - Times Literary Supplement (London)

"If you are looking for a new take on how to live well when the body is failing, Shriver could be just the difficult, limping fellow traveller you need." - The Times (UK)

"A cheeky diatribe on a society determined to go to extremes."

The Motion of the Body Through Space is notionally about fitness fanaticism, but it's really about physical decline and mortality . . . . What's remarkable is that Shriver, who is at her most lyrical and compelling when contemplating her characters' ambivalence, is so inordinately assured of her positions on real-world issues that many of us find confounding. - Ariel Levy, The New Yorker

Lionel Shriver's The Motion of the Body Through Space is a caustic satire on the modern obsession with exercise in all its lunatic narcissism, with sideswipes at chiding woke culture. But it also contains the most tender passage I've ever read on what it means to grow old in a long marriage. - Janice Turner, The Times (UK)