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 brillian...