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The thing itself adam roberts5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() Indeed, Roberts is not embarrassed to use the odd genre trope when needed, such as when he gets Charles to ask someone to run through Kant’s categories one more time, obviously so we can hear them.īut this main narrative alternates with other chapters involving different characters and stories, each written in a completely different style, including Joycean stream of conscious, 17th-century vernacular, and a pastiche of Thomas de Quincey. If that were all there was to the book it would be a kind of infinitely superior Dan Brown romp, elevated by its genuinely intelligent philosophical core. Once Charles is roped in, his life becomes a bruising, perilous adventure in which it is never clear who is to be trusted, who is bonkers and what is real. But is Roy a lunatic or a genius? When Charles is courted by the mysterious Institute, which claims to have verified Roy’s central idea, it seems he might be both. Roy is the menacing nemesis of the main narrator of The Thing Itself, Charles Gardner, almost killing him in incidents decades and literally poles apart. ![]()
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