The Book of Strange New Things
Michel Faber
[Canongate]
Michel Faber masks his multifaceted new work The Book of Strange New Things as a straight-up sci-fi tale. In a dystopian future where hurricanes, wars and food shortages plague the Earth, Peter, a kind of intergalactic Christian missionary, is sent to the distant planet Oasis to serve as a pastor for the mysterious ‘native population’. As he acclimatizes to his environment, Peter finds he is struggling to relate to his wife Bea, who sends him increasingly dismal reports of life back at home. To his horror, Peter discovers that the tragedies leave him unmoved: ‘There was only so much calamitous change you could hear about… before your brain stopped digesting,’ he observes. Instead, he focuses on his mission of ‘spooning Bible verses into the hungry mouths of Oasans,’ an alien race whose facial features are described as resembling ‘a placenta with two fetuses’.
Faber’s suspense-building is masterful, with morsels of information parsimoniously doled out to keep readers hungry for more. Yet those waiting for shocking twists may be disappointed: the author is less interested in unraveling the mysteries of the alien world he has created than he is in untangling human relationships. The conflict between religion and sexuality is something Faber has explored in the past in, for example, The Crimson Petal and the White. But while that book set forth an array of sexually repressed characters, here Peter sees sexual desire as an affirmation of life, a distinctly human trait that need not be at odds with religious faith. ‘There is so little said in the New Testament about sexual love, and most of it consists of Paul heaving a deep sigh and tolerating it like a weakness,’ Peter laments to Bea. Zooming in on the increasing disconnection between the two, Faber examines the ways in which physical distance can irreparably alter even our closest relationships. His astute observations make this novel a worthwhile read, even for readers who are put off by the book’s sci-fi sheen.
Words: Eliza A. Kalfa
