Book 865: The Secret to Superhuman Strength – Alison Bechdel

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this one, I just knew I would absolutely read it as I’ve read everything else by Bechdel.

I knew it was nonfiction and that it more than likely was going to chronicle her life. I mean, that’s her on the cover AND she’s a serial chronicler of her life and what she’s experienced. With Fun Home being about her dad and their relationship, and Are You My Mother? about her mom and their relationship, I honestly wasn’t sure where she’d go next.

In The Secret to Superhuman Strength Bechdel chronicles her relationship with exercise from her earliest memories through various fads and crazes over the years even up to the pandemic we’re still living through. But she does so much more than this. She talks about her substance abuse, her journey of self-discovery, her successful and failed relationships, and mirrors her own journeys through various New England (her adopted home) authors across history from Coleridge to Kerouac.

I found the artwork to be just as beautiful and full of detail as all of her other works. In particular, I really appreciated her return to multicolor panels after the monochrome publications of her last two memoirs. It just added an extra layer of dimension and detail to most of the panels.

The most interesting part to me was how she chronicled her rise in fame after Fun Home. There was a particular jadedness about it that didn’t take away from the appreciation she felt, but it was clear she was balancing on an edge of emotional and mental exhaustion and often times had to take the path of least resistance.

I’m proud to say I’ve ignored a lot of the fads she mentions, but then again, I’ve never been the healthiest of people. Bechdel, however tried seemingly every sport  and fad there was. One series of panels toward the end of the novel she doesn’t even talk about what sport she’s doing. It’s the one where you wench a strap between two trees and balance beam it or bounce up and down on it. Instead, she just draws it over time (spring to fall) and her cartoon becomes more stable and she writes about some metaphysical/meditation concept.

Recommendation: This is yet another beautifully drawn thoughtful graphic memoir from one of the masters of the genre. Bechdel weaves seemingly disparate threads together to form a tapestry of her life from yet another angle we haven’t seen yet. I just hope we don’t have to wait as long for her next work! (But only if she wants to do it and doesn’t feel the pressure or stress of doing it! :-D)