The Hero’s Body: A Memoir

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. [em](Aug.) [/em]