{"id":2129,"date":"2022-07-21T16:44:46","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T16:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2129"},"modified":"2023-04-02T22:58:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T22:58:24","slug":"terra-nova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2129","title":{"rendered":"Terra Nova"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The supposed hero of this book is Captain Edward Heywoud, a paragon of colonial manliness who \u201c[trails] ambition and resolve.\u201d For years, he\u2019s climbed the world\u2019s highest peaks, sometimes with his photographer wife, Viola Colfax. Now, in 1910, he and long-time climbing companion James Watts and several other hardy men and their sled dogs are tackling the ultimate challenge: to reach the South Pole. And not just make it there, but do so before a Norwegian expedition claims the glory for its king rather than England\u2019s. In a parallel struggle is Viola, who also isn\u2019t the book\u2019s hero, fascinating though she is. She\u2019s in love with Edward, although he disapproves of many of her activities and is fond of telling her what she will do, but she also loves the gentler James, and the two are having an affair. While the men are away\u2014a voyage chronicled in gripping and often horrible detail by author Lazaridis\u2014Viola takes on the challenge of documenting the suffragette movement, a project interrupted when the men return and their photographs lead her to think their triumph is a fraud. As to the hero here, it\u2019s not a particular person but the bodies described in this gorgeous and devastating work: James\u2019s and Edward\u2019s in Antarctica as they compare the calories they use against the remaining food and end up eating their dogs; the hunger-striking suffragettes, whose emaciated, police-battered bodies feature in a fascinating project by Viola; the steadfast figure of Mary, Edward and Viola\u2019s maid, who indirectly makes the expeditions possible but is taken for granted by the family; and the body of the Earth, which tries to kill the men even as it enables their fame. The frustrating, brilliant Viola is one of my favorite characters, and this <strong>book one of my favorite reads, in a long time.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The supposed hero of this book is Captain Edward Heywoud, a paragon of colonial manliness who \u201c[trails] ambition and resolve.\u201d For years, he\u2019s climbed the world\u2019s highest peaks, sometimes with&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[54,164],"class_list":["post-2129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-historical","tag-star"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Terra-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Terra-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}