Strange Bodies: A Novel

Author: Marcel Theroux

Perhaps it is the fact that he is the son of Paul Theroux that tends to get Marcel Theroux tagged as a mainstream novelist. In fact his work has often shown awareness of genre: his second novel, The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes, nodded towards the great detective story, while his fourth, Far North, was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. But it is his next novel that really stands out. At first it reads like a mystery: a man turns up claiming to be the academic Nicholas Slopen, even though he looks nothing like Slopen. Then we read Slopen's story: he was hired by a mysterious stranger to authenticate some writings by Dr Johnson, but when he investigated, he found they were being written by a man held prisoner in a London house. Yet the writing seems to be authentic, and when he talks to the man he seems to have Johnson's personality. Eventually, we find this is a case of identity transfer that is a by-product of a failed Russian experiment. Strange Bodies won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Because Theroux resolutely treats the strangest of events as though they are perfectly rational and everyday, so that the wildness of the story is all in the minds of the characters, it is easy to read this novel as if it were mainstream, until you sit back and think about exactly what is going on here.