Noted for her acid-perceptive social commentary (remember We Need To Talk About Kevin?), Shriver takes on aging and the exercise craze in this story of shamefacedly retired Remington, who decides he's going to run the marathon. Wife Serenata is dismayed—he's hardly ever moved a muscle—and soon Remington is a self-absorbed sports obsessive, with their marriage heading for breakdown. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

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. 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—and wraps them up in a story filled with sly humor and insight. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/19.]—Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Shriver's bitter satire of the elite exercise industry (after the collection Property) huffs along with sobering reflections on aging. Serenata Terpsichore and Remington Alabaster, married for 32 years, have recently moved to Hudson, N.Y., in the wake of Remington losing his civil engineering job in Albany. The couple's bumptious domestic bickering comes to a head after sedentary Remington, at 64, announces he will run marathon. Serenata, who's been a runner for years, scolds him for the unwelcome "incursion into her territory." Nevertheless, Remington trains, buys neon-colored running gear and a "brushed-steel, state-of-the-art" treadmill with surround sound. At the finish line, he is accompanied by Bambi Buffer, a late 30-something woman in a lavender sports bra whom Serenata derisively refers to as an "anatomy illustration." Bambi encourages Remington toward a new goal, the Lake Placid MettleMan Triathlon. With Serenata as a mouthpiece, Shriver casts her familiar brand of mordant humor at easy targets, but unlike in the work of Edward St. Aubyn, for instance, the narrator's meanness serves no apparent purpose, and the razor-sharp observation isn't balanced by self-implication. The result is underwhelming. (May)