Michel Faber

Ground control to Major Tom

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (Hogarth, $28).

Michel Faber, the Scottish author of Under the Skin and The Crimson Petal and the White, uses genre fiction to make serious and literary points. In his latest novel, The Book of Strange New Things, Faber examines what it means to believe in something larger than oneself.

Peter, a Christian missionary, heads out to a faraway land, leaving his wife, Beatrice, behind. His mission is entirely in the hands of show more his employer, a shadowy corporation that hopes to exploit the natives. As he evangelizes among them—the “book of strange new things” is their term for the Bible—things are not going well at all at home. Beatrice, facing hardships and disasters, is both pregnant and losing her faith.

But rather than being historical fiction, The Book of Strange New Things occurs in a far future, where it’s the galaxy rather than the sea that separates the two.

This is a fascinating piece of speculative fiction that demonstrates just how difficult cross-cultural communication really is, as well as how much distance gets between us. The ethical issues resonate so profoundly because the characters are so real—we feel Peter’s yearning to do good as well as Beatrice’s desperate loneliness—and that makes this one of the more fascinating books this year.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com show less

What makes the fabulous Sugar so fabulous? At the age of 19 she's been a prostitute for 6 years. She's cultured, well read, well spoken with what appears to be a photograph memory and and equally admirable ability to make her men feel special. The deplorable William Rackham has met her for the first time. Gazing into her eyes, which are so large and shiny that he sees his face reflected, William Rackham rediscovers the elusive joy of being William Rackham. There is a will-o'-the wisp of show more behaviours, alcohol-fueled and fragile, that he singles out as being his true self, quite distinct from the thickening physical lump he sees in the looking-glass every morning. The mirror cannot lie, and yet it does, it does! It cannot reflect the flame-like destinies trapped inside the frustrated soul. Four William ought to have been a Keats, a Bulwer Lytton, or even a Chatterton, but instead is transmogrifying, outwardly at least, into a gross copy of his own father. Rare indeed are the moments when he can illuminate a captivated audience with the glow of his youthful promise. Sugar is a very talented woman. She knows how to make a man feel is what he most wants to be. In fact, that seems to be the goal not just of the prostitutes in the book, but of the entire lower class. There are those who own and have the leisure to enjoy art and become the people they most want to be, and it's the duty of the rest of the world to help them do just that. A rich man is asking a poor man to describe poverty and says he will pay him but only after he gets the answer. Well, well! he declares. There you 'ave the plight of the poor man in a nutshell. The likes of you gets money gived to you no matter how lazy and wicked you are, and the likes of us must press our old trousers, and 'ang curtains on our broken winders, and sing 'ymns while we shines yer shoes, before you'll give us a penny!

The Crimson Petal and the white is a study of male-female relations, class relations, religion, morality and self fulfillment. Its 900 pages would seem to be daunting, but the hard part comes when the book is over and the reader no longer gets to see the world through Sugar or Emmeline's eyes. show less

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber superficially resembles The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell in that a religious person accompanies an exploration team to a new planet to contribute special expertise. Faber's vision is both very much darker (disasters, corporate greed) and more loving (women, love, faith & an unknown colony that speaks & wants to believe).

I meant to save time & just skim this book, but the writing and ideas were so beautiful and compelling, the characters so show more multi-layered, the foreignness so strange, that I kept going back for more. Peter, the pastor with a past, is an interesting character, embodying Christian principles with love and without fanfare. Yes, he builds a church or two. Beatrice, his wife who stays behind in the "real" world, is his rock, touchstone, strength, guide from the personal darkness of his prior self to the explorer who brings guidance to the heavens.

Their relationship underpins the story. Out front, there are mines & cars, concerns about food and drink, holding mind & body together, frequent rain, strange crops, swarms of scavengers, and the off-worlders selected to build a brave new world -- or escape the frightening old one.

Beautifully written & imagined (check out the Table of Contents), compellingly readable. Note: my ebook version shows the empty box symbol when the Oasan language was rendered. No problem, since you can usually grok the context. The hard copy will not have this problem, but not sure how the final digital file will handle this. {Pre-publication review copy via nook download from Hogarth & Edelweiss. Thank you.} show less

Both the book and its film adaptation get the same rating from me. A female serial killer who sends the men she targets to a dreadful fate is a terrific inversion of the bog-standard female-as-victim trope that I am mortally sick of. It's telling that the only way this is allowed to happen is if the female in question is an alien. A human female serial killer? Unthinkable!

My eyes finally rolling back to the position where I can see to type, I'll say this for Faber's now -23-year-old novel show more and its ten-year-old film adaptation: the thoughts each provokes are deep and discomfiting ones about the nature of our unquestioned place as the apex of all things, as males and as humans. show less