When the narrator’s father tells his fitness instructor that “rest and recovery is just as important as working out,” for instance, the instructor responds not by disagreeing but by lobbing a volley of obscenities. Actions no longer earn their predictable reactions. At its best, the novel showcases the recognizable confusion of a changing world. “My Father’s Diet” is a compact and stirring, if uneven, portrait of transgenerational hesitation. As in real life, opportunities are easily wasted. His son, the book’s narrator, decides to help him train, an agreement that offers an opportunity for the two to reconnect after years apart. “What’s the point of my life on this planet?” A big question, but the one at the core of West’s “My Father’s Diet,” a novel about a father who, recently divorced and looking for something to do, enters a bodybuilding contest.
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