THAT WARRIOR

A man embarks on a quest to help the people around him while refining and building his own physique in this novel.

Tom, a gay man in small-town Rhode Island, is a self-described “warrior.” He paints himself as a kindly average Joe but whose dedication to good manners marks him as among a class of people he thinks of as warriors—humanitarians who fight for the benefit of the public. The narrative that follows considers the different ways Tom injects positivity during a happenstance journey through the world of bodybuilding. After feeling motivated by the “before” and “after” shots in a fitness book, Tom signs up for training sessions at xCellFitness, where he is promptly introduced to the idea of becoming a bodybuilder and taking on his central warrior project of toning his physique. He meets a trainer named Lee, who is down on his luck, dealing with a nasty divorce, living in his parents’ basement, and finding himself the subject of gay rumors. Lee encourages Tom to become a bodybuilder and volunteers to be his trainer. But Tom’s motive in accepting this arrangement is “Project Lee”: to make the trainer see that “he is loved.” Caesar’s idea behind this book, to show Tom helping Lee as well as aiding or connecting with co-workers and neighbors during various goodwill missions, is heartfelt and endearing. The author has also created a sympathetic hero and an intriguing cast of characters. Along the way, Caesar delivers a rich portrait of the bodybuilding world, offering evocative details. Yet the tale’s earnestness sometimes walks too fine a line between candid and sentimental. The story wraps up with an ending that’s a bit saccharine. Though Tom is successful in toning his body, bite-sized chapters aren’t sufficiently lean, concluding with unnecessary musings. The way these chapters are structured, explained in the work’s introduction, also presents a few issues. With background that turns into stylized dialogue (mimicking a film script) that turns into summary, each chapter feels like the same exercise, which, by the end of the novel, may challenge some readers more than going to the gym.

An upbeat but uneven tale of an altruistic bodybuilder.