{"id":2471,"date":"2013-05-02T12:02:37","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T11:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=2471"},"modified":"2014-06-24T17:59:45","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T16:59:45","slug":"review-of-strange-bodies-at-arcfinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=2471","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW OF STRANGE BODIES AT ARCFINITY"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/strange_bodies.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-2472\" alt=\"strange_bodies\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/strange_bodies-187x300.jpg\" width=\"187\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/strange_bodies-187x300.jpg 187w, http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/strange_bodies.jpg 448w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 187px) 100vw, 187px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/arcfinity.tumblr.com\/post\/49427126913\/were-reading-strange-bodies-by-marcel-theroux \">My review of Marcel Theroux&#8217;s new novel, <em>Strange Bodies<\/em>, is online now at <em>Arcfinity<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>When this arrived in the post I realised that I had actually read Theroux&#8217;s previous novel &#8211; the Clarke Award nominated <em>Far North<\/em> &#8211; but had absolutely no recollection of what it was about. I spotted it on the shelf, reread the first chapter and remembered none of it. It had made no impression on me whatsoever. That was worrying.<\/p>\n<p>Further inspection of <em>Strange Bodies<\/em> revealed a blurb from John Gray, the philosopher-prince of miserablism, on the rear in which he claimed that this novel challenges &#8220;everything we believe about what it means to be human&#8221;. My heart sank further. How many terrible reviews of terrible novels have I read which praise the exploration of &#8220;what it means to be human&#8221;? What else are novels about? What would be the point of a novel that didn&#8217;t explore what it meant to be human?<\/p>\n<p>So, bad first impressions. Did the novel live down to my expectations? There&#8217;s only one way to find out &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/arcfinity.tumblr.com\/post\/49427126913\/were-reading-strange-bodies-by-marcel-theroux\">read the review<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(I think I&#8217;ve started to write trailers for my own reviews&#8230; that&#8217;s worrying.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My review of Marcel Theroux&#8217;s new novel, Strange Bodies, is online now at Arcfinity. When this arrived in the post I realised that I had actually read Theroux&#8217;s previous novel &#8211; the Clarke Award nominated Far North &#8211; but had absolutely no recollection of what it was about. I spotted it on the shelf, reread [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[20],"tags":[116,118,69,42,47,43,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-DR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2471"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2474,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}