PositiveThe Brooklyn RailChen’s subtle, probing, and ambitious novel is about how this threat of loss and failure looms in the background of these all-consuming careers, and it works as a portrait of the strange, compelling, and competitive little worlds that build up around them ... So Many Olympic Exertions makes competitive sports into an allegory for contemporary life ... the narrative treads water. The writing is an account of her consciousness, but it is descriptive rather than confessional ... Much of the narrative consists of descriptions of this sort, detached and yet vivid ... Chen’s novel, joining a chorus of other recent ambitious art and literature, reveals contemporary life as a strange kind of game ... By working philosophy and sports, autobiography and fiction, history and reflection into a cohesive narrative form, writing like this tries to imagine something else, a space in that world for something like true diversion.
