The Bulgarian Training Manual
Ruth Bonapace
Clash Books, 2024, $18.95
Can a book hold untold riches, promises of health, strength, beauty, and spiritual aspirations? The Bulgarian Training Manual, the tome for which Kingston-based author Ruth Bonapace named her novel, certainly prophesies all these things, even if we get mere whiffs of its contents, in the form of diet advice and a weekly workout chart. To a group of bodybuilders, it becomes a kind of bible; they argue about the different versions of the ad hoc, super-secret manual—a thick stack of photocopies held together by a binder clip. It lands in the hands of Christina (“Tina”) Acqualina Bontempi, an unsuccessful real estate broker living in a flood-prone basement apartment in Hoboken who had been raised by her grandmother, or so she thought.
Tina interacts with a roster of zany characters whose interactions affect her fate in large and small ways. Her ex, Steve (later, Big Steve), gives her the manual to begin with; he has undergone a transformation from OCD nerd to a gym star. Her boss, Joe Fox, a macher who’s not only a crackerjack real estate broker but an ex-pilot with Rat Pack style. A mysterious man in a shearling hat who seems to pop up with regularity on various continents. Baba Yaga, a Bulgarian advocate and dealer of a lauded “dietus mirabilis.” Tina pinballs between this cast, following fate, hunches, and her desire to achieve fame through her bodybuilding.
One of the hilarious dietetic secrets to bodily perfection is eating communion wafers, preferably the gluten-free kind. They should be eaten with extracts from arugula-fed snails for maximum effectiveness to match the benefits of performance-enhancing drugs. (Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.) The demand for the wafers explodes, stressing the factory and sisterhood that makes them. Word spreads, and lines to take communion swell with the swole, along with the donation baskets filled with guilt-driven cash.
Head-snapping events unfold. Joe Fox hustles Tina to the airport and onto a cargo plane, which he flies to Bulgaria. She encounters a German inn-keeping couple, and Catherine of Siena, part of the #Persecuted#Womens#Collective order, and her erstwhile sister. She eventually comes across the Ancient Gym, where some dweebs are trying to piece together a complete version of The Bulgarian Training Manual. She is compelled to flex her bicep and strike a pose, which elicits applause and reactions telling her she is the real thing, sent to restore the Ancient Gym to its glory and flesh out the manual. Eventually, Tina discovers the identity of her purportedly true biological parents, one of them an A-list bodybuilding icon. She is tasked with completing, or reworking, the training manual, which would be authentic as it would emanate from her DNA.
The story culminates in the First Annual International Poetry Body Slam, where entrants strike poses to pre-recorded music while volunteers read original poetry only in Bulgarian, English, or Esperanto—the ultimate melding of body and mind. If that seems wacky, consider some of the events at the recent Paris Olympics such as speed climbing, breaking, and artistic swimming (with all props to the athletes, to new eyes they seem pretty wild!). The Olympians also serve as real-life examples of people of widely varying backgrounds focusing on competing and training toward reaching the games while working typical jobs. Not unlike Tina and The Bulgarian Training Manual.
Bonapace’s plot leaps from here to there; sometimes it feels as if she’s simply reveling in the power and play of words for fun, remarking on alliteration every now and then, toying with different forms, from song lyrics to scripted dialogue. Quotations and references from classics to pop culture abound, from Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman, Thomas Kincade, Rachel Ray (presumably intentionally misspelled to avoid legal ramifications), “The Hokey Pokey,” to “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” Her satirical yet freewheeling style allows for out-there ideas to enter the narrative to weave a sometimes mind-boggling, often entertaining story of self-discovery, self-help, and minor celebrity.
This article appears in September 2024.
