The Secret to Superhuman Strength

This graphic memoir of a lifelong love affair with exercise, set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads from comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel. She delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination with every fitness craze to come down the pike. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author’s own. Ultimately she learns that the secret to superhuman strength lies in facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others.

(This book may contain a sharpie mark on the top or bottom edge and may show mild signs of shelfwear.)