The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel, by Michel Faber
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The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel, by Michel Faber
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A monumental, genre-defying novel that David Mitchell calls "Michel Faber’s second masterpiece," The Book of Strange New Things is a masterwork from a writer in full command of his many talents. It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter. Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us. Marked by the same bravura storytelling and precise language that made The Crimson Petal and the White such an international success, The Book of Strange New Things is extraordinary, mesmerizing, and replete with emotional complexity and genuine pathos.From the Hardcover edition.
The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel, by Michel Faber - Amazon Sales Rank: #60690 in Books
- Brand: Faber, Michel
- Published on: 2015-06-30
- Released on: 2015-06-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.97" h x 1.41" w x 5.19" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel, by Michel Faber Review A New Yorker Best Book of 2014 An NPR Great Read of 2014 A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014 Selected as one of the Independent’s Books of the Year 2014 An io9.com Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2014 An ABA Indie Next Pick A Fresno Bee Favorite Book of 2014 A Guardian Writers Pick of 2014, Selected by Jackie Kay Selected as one of Kansas City Star’s 100 Best Books of 2014 Selected by Financial Times’ David Mitchell as a Favorite Book of 2014 A Book Riot Best Book of 2014 A BookBrowse Top Book of 2014 Goodreads.com Best Book of the Month A Kirkus Must-reads A Barnes & Noble Fiction Selection, Top Books for the Holiday Season A ShelfAwareness Best Books of 2014 Honorable Mention A Minnesota Public Radio Best Books of 2014 Selection Publishers Lunch news editor Sarah Weinman’s best of the year list, honorable mentionA Rick Riordan Favorite Read of 2014 A PopMatters Best Books of 2014“Defiantly unclassifiable. . . . The Book of Strange New Things squeezes its genre ingredients to yield a meditation on suffering, love and the origins of religious faith. . . . Faber reminds us there is a literature of enchantment, which invites the reader to participate in the not-real in order to wake from a dream of reality to the ineffability, strangeness, and brevity of life on Earth.” —Marcel Theroux, The New York Times Book Review (cover review) “Provocative, unsettling.” —People “Profoundly moving. . . . . A vivid portrait of a distant galaxy, reinforced by a narrative that is deeply, emotionally evocative.” —USA Today “Elegant. . . . A lovely, thought-provoking meditation on love and faith and the never-ending mysteries of the natural world.” —Entertainment Weekly “Eerie and ambitious. . . . Faber is a genuinely gifted storyteller and his novel gains resonance and tidal force in its final third.” —The New York Times “Faber illustrates, movingly, the impossibility of adequate communication in the face of life-changing experience. . . . Rich and memorable.” —The New Yorker “The Book of Strange New Things will blow you away…Powerful… Even beyond its power as a story of cross-cultural encounters, and the questions it makes you ask about the place of humanity in the universe, Book of Strange New Things is also worth reading as a great personal story of a man and his wife, as their relationship faces the ultimate test..Fantastic.”—io9.com “Fascinating…Poignant…Remarkable… Despite its bizarre setting and all the elements of an interplanetary opera, this is a novel of profound spiritual intimacy…. I relished every chance to cloister myself away with “The Book of Strange New Things”…[It] offers exactly what I crave: a state of mingled familiarity and alienness that leaves us with questions we can’t answer — or forget.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post “One of the best books I’ve ever read. . . . It’s a love story, and the last line destroyed me.” —Emily St. John Mandel, The Millions “Faber's great strength, trotted out right from the opening pages — this ability to write believable, lovely, flawed and inept characters. To animate his creations by exposing their great loves and human frailties, and to make us want, somehow, to follow along behind them…Faber tells a beautifully human story of love, loss, faith and the sometimes uncrossable distances between people.”—NPR.org, “All Things Considered” “Harrowing, wrenching. . . . A bold and unexpected work of beauty. . . . Faber’s sincerity keeps The Book of Strange New Things honest, and his talent steers him away from cliché.” —The New Republic “A wonderful adventure story, a quasi-science fiction tale and a probing examination of a marriage. . . . A truly strange and wonderful novel. . . . Please read Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things. You won't regret it.”—Cleveland Plain-Dealer “[A] masterpiece” —Cosmopolitan “I would almost like to say, ‘Read this book,’ and leave it with that. Because its charms, and they are considerable, are so tied with discovering what the heck is going on. That challenges a reviewer, because almost anything I tell you will spoil a moment of discovery…the writing is such a pleasure.”—Dallas Morning News “A bracing, rewarding read.”—Kansas City Star “[Faber] approaches this interplanetary saga as an expert genre traveler. . . . [His] potent new amalgam of sci-fi and spirituality puts him within rocket range of David Mitchell.” —New York “Intergalactic in scope.” —Reuters “This is a big novel . . . but the reader is pulled through it at some pace by the gothic sense of anxiety that pervades and taints every element. . . . Astonishing and deeply affecting.” —The Guardian “A novel so full of ideas, so charged by plot, so odd and wonderful, and written with astonishing emotional precision. There are some novels that come along every now and again, when writing a review seems superfluous and all one wants to do is to grab someone by the shoulders and say: “Look, just read the damn thing!” This is one of them. Michel Faber always has had an astonishing ability to make the strange believable and the alien real, but in this thoughtful, deeply moving page-turner, he excels himself.” —The Scotsman “A hugely serious story about the testing of religious faith. . . . When [Peter’s] spiritual crisis does indeed hit it is as gripping as any thriller. . . . A work of originality and insight.” —The Times “A moving human drama disguised as a gripping science fiction tale. . . . Magnificently bold and addictive. . . . A book quite unlike any other I've ever read.” —The Sunday Times “Faber’s new novel grapples with [what it means to be human] in unusually direct terms. . . . The fascination of [his] prose style is its lack of sensationalism. His voice on the page is serene and oddly innocent. . . . One might call The Book of Strange New Things sci-fi, speculative fiction, literary fiction—or maybe just welcome it, thankfully, with a ‘Never before now.’” —The Independent (UK) “Contemporary literary fiction rarely provides a Victorian-length magical mystery tour along the trail of breathtaking narrative…[yet] Michel Faber’s vast new storytelling extravaganza, The Book of Strange New Things, is that kind of novel. It embodies a wondrous and sorrowful experience you don’t just read, but live.”—Toronto Star “Spellbinding, heartbreaking and mind-bending. . . . This is very much a book that rewards re-reading; its subtle echoes and wisps of allusion reverberate across the text. . . . The Book Of Strange New Things is Faber’s strongest, most plangent and most intellectually gleeful novel. It is affecting as much as it is challenging. . . . Bold, brave, brilliant. . . . It’s also, by the way, the most wonderful love story.” —Scottish Review of Books “Brilliant, and disquieting. . . . Faber’s novel is entirely true to itself and wonderfully original. It makes a fine update to Walter M. Miller Jr.’s Canticle for Leibowitz, with some Marilynne Robinson-like homespun theology thrown in for good measure. . . . A profoundly religious exploration of inner turmoil.” —Kirkus (starred review) “A marvelously creative and intricate novel, thought-provoking and arresting.” —Booklist “A monumental, genre-defying novel over ten years in the making, Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things is a masterwork from a writer in full command of his many talents.”—Book Browse, Selected as a Top Book of 2014 “The book wears its strong premise and mixture of Biblical and SF tropes extremely well.”—Publishers Weekly “At the heart of The Book of Strange New Things is one question: Whom—or what—do you love, and what are you willing to do for that love (or not willing)? The result is a novel of marvel and wonderment with a narrative engine like a locomotive.” —Yann Martel “In my opinion The Book of Strange New Things is Michel Faber’s second masterpiece, quite different to The Crimson Petal and the White but every bit as luminescent and memorable. It is a portrait of a living, breathing relationship, frayed by distance. It is an enquiry into the mountains faith can move and the mountains faith can’t move. It is maniacally gripping. It is vibrant with wit and overcast with prescience and social commentary. Like all superlative science fiction, its real subject is that most mystifying of alien species, humanity. I didn’t so much read The Book of Strange New Things as inhabit it, the way you inhabited that handful of books which, as a kid, first got you hooked on this wonderful drug known as reading.” —David Mitchell “Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things certainly lives up to its title. Faber, as he showed in Under the Skin, does strangeness brilliantly. I can’t remember being so continually and unfailingly surprised by any book for a long time, and part of the surprise is the tenderness and delicacy with which he shows an emotional relationship developing in one direction while withering in another. I found it completely compelling and believable, and admired it enormously.” —Philip Pullman “Weird and disturbing, like any work of genius, this novel haunted me for the seven nights I spent reading it, and haunts me still. A story of faith that will mesmerize believers and non-believers alike, a story of love in the face of the Apocalypse, a story of humanity set in an alien world—The Book of Strange New Things is desperately beautiful, sad, and unforgettable.” —David Benioff “Intriguing…both painful and compelling. And when you find out the answers to some of the novel's central mysteries . . . Well, I won't give anything away, but the answers pack a punch.”—Rick RiordanFrom the Hardcover edition.
About the Author MICHEL FABER is the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Crimson Petal and the White, Under the Skin—shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award—and several other books. Faber has won many short story awards and his writing has appeared in Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, among others. He lives in Scotland.
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Most helpful customer reviews
143 of 151 people found the following review helpful. An Immersive Experience By Dunyazad I really enjoyed Faber's earlier novel The Crimson Petal and the White, so I was excited to see that he'd written another one. The premise was also intriguing: a Christian missionary travels to another planet to work with the native population there, while receiving updates from his wife about the increasingly apocalyptic conditions back home on earth. The book interweaves the story of Peter's missionary work among the aliens with the story of his increasingly strained relationship with his wife, which suffers from the vast distance between them and the enormous difference in their circumstances.There are some themes here that I don't normally find very compelling, namely issues of faith and marital difficulties. But I found myself completely absorbed in Faber's creation, tearing through this hefty volume in a matter of days. The characters all felt very real to me, with vivid personalities and abundant flaws. There were times when I would have liked more detail about certain events, particularly Peter's early days among the natives, but ultimately the book as a whole comes together very well. Various mysteries are satisfactorily resolved. The only aspect of the story that I found somewhat unsatisfying was its open-endedness; there are hints about how everything may turn out, but we don't actually see it all through to the end. I can understand why Faber stopped where he did; important decisions have been made and events have been put in motion, so that it might actually have been anticlimactic to pursue each thread down to its final resolution. I just wasn't quite ready to leave this story yet, which might speak as much to its power as to anything else.A word of warning: despite the central role of faith, this is definitely not what I would classify as "Christian fiction". It opens with a sex scene and contains plenty of profanity, along with descriptions of bodily functions, masturbation, etc. This is the sort of content that could have come across as gratuitous, but instead it adds an element of gritty realism. The religious message is also not entirely unwavering, which I appreciated as a non-Christian reader.I'd like to say more about the plot and the various issues that arise in the course of Peter's mission, but I think it's best to approach the story without too much prior information and just allow yourself to get caught up in the flow. There are plenty of surprising elements here whose impact might be diminished by reading about them beforehand. Peter sets off on a journey into the unknown, and I'm very glad that I had an opportunity to travel along with him. I just wish I could do a better job of explaining why I liked this book so much; it's a powerful novel whose impact I can't seem to express in words. Reading it was a fully immersive experience.
41 of 42 people found the following review helpful. This book has few strengths and many weaknesses. By LWM This book has few strengths and many weaknesses. Strengths are a reasonable writing style and a potentially interesting study of a Christian missionary proselytizing to an alien race while his wife remains on an earth that is in increasing environmental and social decline. But the weaknesses: flat characters, racial and sexual stereotypes, little plot, poor elaboration of the aliens, and extreme wordiness. The last was in my view the worst of these transgressions (might as well sound biblical). The book should have been half its length at most, maybe much less than that. Perhaps a novella at best. Pick almost any succession of long paragraphs and you'll see what I mean. I was reminded of early school days when essays were padded to meet requirements of minimum length.I bring to this no prejudice about the author or the genre. The book is simply mediocre at best. Like many others who have commented before me, I do not understand the praise that this book has received from so many professional reviewers. Well, there is one explanation: past success leads to easy grading.
100 of 113 people found the following review helpful. "Hope always comes back, pushing up through the ashes, growing from seeds that are invisible and invincible." By Denise Crawford 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory."This novel was definitely NOT anything like Faber's book, The Crimson Petal and the White (my favorite of all his books) set in Victorian London. Instead, the reader is transported to a brave new world far away from Earth where a mysterious mega corporation known as USIC has set up a colony of scientists to make the planet liveable. The new world is named Oasis in a contest and Peter Leigh is sent there as a missionary to cater to the needs of the native inhabitants -- to bring them the word of Jesus and his Book of Strange New Things -- The King James Bible. Peter is no ordinary pastor -- once a drug addict and alcoholic, the reformed preacher is eager to begin his work spreading the good news to the Oasans (as he calls them). Surprisingly, many of these natives are already converted and hungry for the Word. Unfortunately, Peter's wife, Bea, has had to stay behind on Earth putting a severe strain on their marriage as billions of miles separate them and they can only communicate by messages sent through a device called the Shoot.While Bea sends messages of calamity in England and disasters around the world, Peter finds himself in his element tending to his new flock. Overcome with his success, he neglects Bea and their relationship starts to unravel. Caring less about the world he left behind, Peter becomes even more involved with his community of believers and stays with them in their settlement. The creatures are not human in any way, their language is almost unpronounceable, but they attempt to speak English, though without the ability to say some of the consonants *s and *t, for example. Although Peter still interacts peripherally with the others at the USIC base, he finds his heart and soul with the natives and works beside them getting to know them better.I'm not quite sure what to say about my reaction to this book. I have read other glowing reviews calling this a masterpiece. I'm not feeling it. On one hand, it was interesting, on the other, I can see that if you are not a Christian, you will get very tired of the religious theme that is pervasive throughout the book. Peter often quotes long passages from the Bible and delivers sermons to the Oasans and, when he writes Bea -- admonishes his wife to pray and trust in God though her life is falling apart. The concept of new world building is scientifically interesting, but the main story here is Peter bringing Jesus to the natives who want more of this Book of Strange New Things -- in fact, dedicate themselves to its study even as Peter tries to explain concepts of the passages in words they can understand since they don't have knowledge of sheep, flock, gender, and so on. I found myself totally irritated with Peter's self-absorption and selfishness as God-sent missionary and totally empathetic to poor Bea.And, if this bothers you, be warned -- there's a sort of cliffhanger at the end. Knowing how Faber ended Crimson Petal should give you an idea. Would make a great book club book for discussion and I'd love to hear more about what others think of its literary merit.
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The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel, by Michel Faber
The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel, by Michel Faber
