The Hero's Body

May 16, 2016
In this gripping meditation on men and death, AGNI editor Giraldi confronts the demands of masculinity that propelled him into extreme bodybuilding and led to his father’s fatal motorcycle accident. Abandoned by his mother at age 10, Giraldi struggled to find a place in his blue-collar family until, after being debilitated by meningitis and dumped by his girlfriend for a high-school jock, he started lifting weights. Transforming his physique through pumping iron—and using steroids—gave Giraldi confidence, a community, and respect. The same passion for risk and need for patriarchal approval led his carpenter father to illegally race high-powered motorcycles on Pennsylvania back roads, with tragic results. Giraldi’s lucid, vibrant prose illuminates the generally unvoiced codes that determine so much male behavior. In the book’s flawless first half, he vividly evokes life in a central New Jersey township during the Reagan-Bush era, the tense dynamics of a domestic circle dominated by his taciturn grandfather, and the allure and destructiveness of bodybuilding. Grappling with his father’s death, however, proves more difficult. Giraldi obsessively scrutinizes the accident as he traces its reverberations across his family, but his father remains opaque. Nevertheless, his narrative provides remarkable insight into the often-stereotyped world of bodybuilding.

Starred review from June 1, 2016
A loving son reflects on life with a brawny father whose premature death permanently transformed him. AGNI fiction editor and New Republic contributing writer Giraldi (Hold the Dark, 2014, etc.) paints himself as an "earnestly unjockish" adolescent who looked up to his muscular father for direction, advice, and as the ultimate example of raw masculinity. Raised solely by his father in working-class, blue-collar Manville, New Jersey, the author writes earnestly about his closet affinity for classic literature and mounting frustration at his inability to measure up to his father's macho image. Craving the "sacral creed" of masculinity that seemed to power the town (and his male-dominated family), a spontaneous visit to his uncle Tony's makeshift workout room drastically altered his perspective, priorities, and physique. He eventually joined the hard-core training circuit culture at the Physical Edge gym, the local "sanctum of the gargantuan." Bodybuilding became an "obsession that included brutalizing workouts, steroids, competitions, an absolute revamping of the self." Thankfully, this hardened intensity doesn't strip Giraldi's memoir of its personality. His adventures with body shaving, maddening diet regimens, the "fetishizing pleasure" of hoarding steroids, and bodybuilding competitions all provide moments of wry humor and steely determination. His interest in bodybuilding deflated once the gym closed its doors and the author's father sold the family home to move in with a girlfriend. Giraldi poignantly ponders his father as a man morphing through the decades from a levelheaded, reliable family man to a "harebrained...high-stakes gambler" and a devotee of treacherous motorcycle racing. His father experienced many nonfatal crashes, but one would take his life in 2000 at 47. The details of his tragedy become blurred with accusations and unsettled with inconclusiveness from an anterior-mounted camera inexplicably vanishing from the scene of the accident. Giraldi provides a respectful homage to his father, who died "attempting to be worthy of an ancient code," but he also pays tribute to the working-class male and the unspoken codes of machismo. A hearty, bittersweet familial chronicle of masculinity drawing on the underappreciated bond between fathers and sons.

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August 1, 2016
In his compelling memoir, novelist Giraldi (Hold the Dark, 2014) uses beautifully nuanced prose to describe growing up in a working-class, hypermasculine New Jersey family. As a motherless, thin, somewhat sickly, and not particularly athletic boy with a macho father who excelled at physical exploits, Giraldi endured a lonely childhood, hungry for love that rarely came his way. His passion, which was not exactly cause for popularity, washis love for literature. At 15, he realizes that he needs to make my own creation myth, to renovate my pathetic vessel into a hero's body, and with the help of Uncle Tony he takes up bodybuilding. Giraldi, who won a Pushcart Prize for an essay on bodybuilding, describes the sport with loving detail, including steroid abuse and the incredible discipline needed to compete. With bodybuilding behind him, Giraldi is in college when he receives news of his father's death in a motorcycle accident. This tragedy occupies the last third of the book, as Giraldi tries to understand the accident and the way it has reverberated throughout his life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2016

Giraldi has written a powerful memoir that examines the masculine in great detail. Born in the small, blue-collar town of Manville, NJ, to a family of carpenters, gym rats (except his father), and motorcycle fanatics, Giraldi dedicates the first half of the book to his youth and brief foray into bodybuilding, presenting a fascinating account of competitive bodybuilding. Later chapters offer a close examination of how and why the men in his family loved motorcycles--and incredible speed. The author recounts his father's death in a horrific motorcycle accident at age 47. Most admirable is Giraldi's love of literature that was not shared by anyone else in his family or circle of friends. Throughout this work he continuously astonishes with his highly intelligent verse, apt quotations from literary giants, and creative wording of concepts that are often difficult to convey. VERDICT This highly recommended book is for anyone who wishes to better understand the male ego, the desire for sheer masculinity, and the need for speed.--Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2016

Giraldi, who's much admired for the novels Busy Monsters and Hold the Dark, here recalls the death of his father at age 47 while racing his motorcycle on a country road. He depicts not only life-shifting grief but a pervasive culture of hypermasculinity in his family and in his working-class New Jersey town. Giraldi's essay on his father's death was a finalist for the 2011 National Magazine Award, an essay on bodybuilding received a Pushcart Prize, and both were short-listed for Best American Essays.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.