The Bone Cage

The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A brilliantly insightful novel about what makes one's life meaningful, and how to pick up the pieces of your life when all your dreams have been shattered.

Elite athletes live a different life than most of us - many years spent so intensely focused on very particular goals, at the expense of their lives, their families, their bodies. So what happens when their bodies give out and their competitive days are over? What if they fought as hard as they could, and it still wasn't enpugh to reach their goals? What if a twist of fate sent them down a radically different path? It's just. It's so sad. How do you get past the feeling of things being left so incomplete, of never knowing if you were good enough to win? What next?

Those are the issues that Sadie, Digger, and their friends are wrestling with through out this book. In the end, I'm not sure anyone has it figured out, but all you can do is try: try to let go of the way things were, and try to build a new sense of self worth, one that is not tied to competition and your identity as an athlete. I want to give Sadie a big hug. Her journey is so rough and raw and real. It's entirely relatable, to see her look back at her team and suddenly feel like she doesn't belong.

Every athlete has to move on eventually, but it's how you do it that shapes the rest of your life. I like that there is no firm resolution in the story about that, because for everyone, that's going to look different.


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