Review: The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

The Secret to Superhuman Strength follows Alison's relationship with exercise, her body, and spirituality. It extensively looks at the mind-body connection and how Alison Bechdel's relationship with this concept has evolved. It has all the honesty, humor, and musings on life from Fun Home and Are You My Mother? This book explores parts of her life that were not in her previous books while still mentioning events touched on in those books. It is not repetitive in any manner, but I would also say it would not be confusing to folks who had not read her earlier work.

Personally, I was less interested in the mind-body connection and spirituality parts of the book. I totally understand its purpose, and I am sure that part is fascinating to many people; I just happen to be someone who isn't that interested in the particular answers to this philosophical idea that Bechdel is interested in. I still liked seeing how her brain was dealing with these topics and seeing who's work she was going to pull in to help analyze these issues. Maybe part of my issue stems from Bechdel presenting a lot of people whose work I am largely interested in critiquing, and that is not the way Bechdel engages with the work. Obviously, this is going to vary from person to person how this hits them; this is just my experience.

I was really interested in Bechdel's relationship to exercise; this book really made me want to go be active (the Florida heat did often quickly cut the impulse). I found it particularly moving to read about how happy exercise and physical achievement made hr. It was also wonderful to explore how the decline in physical ability would and does affect Bechdel. Seeing physical ability and activity talked about as something that is fun, a means to achieve some kind of independence, a stress management tool, something that was a skill to be honed, and as an addiction that could be debilitating. It was all really deeply fascinating.

I also did really like the slightly meta content about Bechdel's experiences of publishing previous books. During the slight lull, I felt when we got pretty deep into philosophy during the portion of the book covering her 30's I knew that the 40's and 50's were coming and would have to reflect on these experiences in some manner. It is really interesting to see how people handle success and varying levels of achievement and fame.

I am so excited to read whatever Bechdel writes in the future. I love her art style, and I really liked that these were colored by her wife, and I just love the way she writes. I will read memoir or fiction from Bechdel until she stops publishing.

I gave this book four stars on Goodreads and The StoryGraph.