The Secret to Superhuman Strength

[cornerofmadness]

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


If I wasn't reading this for some prompt about exercise I wouldn't have finished. To be fair while I liked Dykes to Watch Out For, I did not care for Fun House nor was I thrilled with this. Let me be honest I don't care for memoirs or books about exercise and this is both.

And like Fun House I thought it was very long winded and meandering and the use of Coleridge and other literary people to highlight points in her life got old fast. It was over used and started getting a bit pretentious. (which was the exact same complaint I had for Fun House)

We see Alison use exercise, meditation and drugs/alcohol to cope with a myriad of things. Even exercise when used as a maladaptive coping mechanism isn't healthy which is addressed here. She does yoga, karate, running, biking, HITT, Pilates among others. And it goes decade by decade from her childhood in the 1960s up to the 2020s.

So if you have more patience for a string of relationship implosions, talk of exercise and being such a workaholic vacations seem stupid, give it a try. The art is fine (I'm also thinking I've gone to the wrong all female events. I've never seen as many women running naked at them as she has drawn but then again it was the 70s for her) But I can safely say I'm done with her memoirs. I'm not the audience for them.





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