The natives are shy-and who wouldn’t be, given the rough humans who have come there before Peter-but receptive to his message, which deepens as Peter becomes more and more involved with his mission. “This was not Gethsemane: he wasn’t headed for Golgotha, he was embarking on a great adventure.” So he thinks, allowing for his habit of casting events in religiously hallucinogenic terms. Peter (think about the name) is a minister who, aspiring to be useful, signs up for a stint, courtesy of one of the world’s ruling corporations, on far-off Oasis, a forbidding chunk of rock on which the crew of the Nostromo, of Alien fame, wouldn’t be out of place. Ron Hubbard acolytes, and you have an intriguing scenario prima facie. Throw in a distant planet that's not populated by L. 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.A long-awaited-and brilliant and disquieting-novel of faith and redemption by Scotland-based writer Faber ( The Crimson Petal and the White, 2002, etc.).Įschatological religion and apocalypse make a natural fit. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. 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. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter. 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. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. 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.
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.
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