So Many Olympic Exertions

Blending elements of self-help, memoir, and sports writing, SO MANY OLYMPIC EXERTIONS is an experimental novel that perhaps most resembles what the ancient Greeks called hypomnemata, 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 to answer.