The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber - a Reaction

Before you read this post, please know that it will contain “spoilers” as to the plot developments of Michel Faber's novel. It will not tell you everything but it will tell you some things, so if you’re the kind of person who doesn't like to know anything about a book before you read it, save this post until after you read The Book of Strange New Things.

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We all know that when things start out one way in a story, they are going to have to go the other way before the story is over. So when we meet Peter and his sweet wife Beatrice who are both deeply in love with each other and committed to their Christian vocations, we know, even though we don’t want to know, that things are going to change. Probably for the worse.

Peter, after many years of petty crime and addiction, has found salvation in Beatrice and Jesus (almost simultaneously). Beatrice, after an early life of abuse answered a calling as a nurse and found true love in a messed up patient (Peter.) It’s almost too good to be true.

We meet these lovely folks just as Peter is preparing to depart for a mission. He’s on his way to Orlando, but, no, not there. That’s just a launch site. Peter is off to some distant planet to bring the word of God to the native people living there. 

This is a serious work of literature. Despite the heavy Jesus talk and the alien overlay, it is not “Christian fiction,” nor is it the predictable sci fi space ship story.

Neither is this a typical dystopian novel. In fact, judging by the kindly natives and the temperate climate, the new planet, Oasis, might actually be a Utopia. A mysterious private company, USIC, has colonized Oasis, and we learn that the natives will withhold their food crops from the colonists unless a preacher is promised. 

Enter Peter who is about as full of the Gospel as a person can be. He is ready to enter into his mission, and the natives are delighted to welcome him.

When I saw the glowing comments in an advertisement in The New Yorker, I decided to read this book. Thinking that “the book of strange new things” referred to the novel itself, I expected some sort of fairy tale, perhaps a David Mitchell-esque allegory. But the book referred to is actually the Bible; the natives call it “the book of strange new things.”

On every page, I worried how this novel might let me down. I worried that the gentle natives would turn out to be evil, that Peter would descend into cynicism, that he would have an affair, that Beatrice would die, that a rival religion would come along and convert everyone. I worried most of all that Peter’s very naïve faith would fail him.

And it did. Sort of.

The Oasans, as Peter calls the natives, are eager for the Gospel, for the teaching. Their societal organization is developed almost to the point of genius. They manage their resources, help each other, guard their emotions and welcome strangers. 

Peter’s job is easy. His flock are without sin; moreover, they are without questions or doubts. The book of strange new things (the Bible) is to them a collection of verses to memorize. Their mysterious love for the book is plain though they don’t seem to need it, at least not the way we need it. I never see them challenged by any of it. I never see them changed by any of it. 

Peter would be better utilized ministering to his fellow USIC employees where the need is painfully obvious. His friends and colleagues on Oasis are either frozen into a mindless apathy or feverish with self hatred. But Peter sees himself as the servant of the natives. It is to them he devotes himself and it is in them that he is nearly lost. Their climate, their food, their speech, their habits subsume him. He is sunburnt, filthy, wasted skeletally thin, dehydrated and sleep deprived. He has forgotten his wife and even himself.

Back on planet earth, just about every disaster that we might ever predict is occurring. Financial collapse, climate disasters, rampant crime and brutality abound, and there is poor Beatrice left to deal with it all alone.  Oh, and she is pregnant! The electronic communications between her and Peter devolve into short angry directives. “Don’t come home,” she says.

Peter realizes that the purpose of the colonization of this planet is to ensure a place for the human race to come to when earth is destroyed. So the technology that USIC staff are developing and the relations it is building with the natives couldn't be more important. 

Peter decides to leave Oasis and his mission. Even though he sees himself a failure, he cannot ignore the needs of his wife back home. He cuts his contracted time short and leaves his congregation. No longer certain of his belief in God, he heads back to an uncertain future at home. 

We know that faith is tested. Some of us face horrendous tests; some of us are barely tested at all. Someone like Peter, whose faith saved him once, is vulnerable. Can his faith save him twice?

The author is a professed atheist (I looked this up mid way through the book; such was my dread of a bitter ending); he does not, however, leave us with an atheistic message.

Peter is heading home to find Beatrice, to be with her, to help her. Although they are both foundering, this reader hopes that together they can be restored and possibly restore others. He is doing the human thing, which is a thing he had almost forgotten how to do. If he can find God again at all, it will be by living into his humanity once more. 

That is the ending that I choose for Peter and Beatrice. I have known so many people whose faith is renewed when they are in dire straits, and God’s attention to us at those times is well-attested in Scripture. In the end, Peter does not need the book of strange new things; he needs his own human self to reach out to his wife and, then, I hope, to God.