The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber

This book elicited one of the widest range of views and scores of any we have read. And this, despite escaping to the less than atmospheric upper room of The Ram due to a Liverpool - Man City football match being shown in the pub below.

In attendance: Chris B (book chooser), Andrew, Chris W, Mark T, Mark W., John Apologies: Willm, Richard and Steve

CB found it a very readable book and an engaging story. A satisfying book that hangs together as a convincing story despite the sci-fi context. SC really liked the book. It almost always passed the ‘do I want to pick it up and read it tonight’ test. It feels like an original, ambitious and absorbing creation. Overall, a big, interesting and readable book with thought-provoking ideas and some entertainingly sexy bits. A bit long but he liked it.

RV though unfinished, was enjoying the book.  It is very well written, with a very interesting protagonist, and is a book which raises a host of interesting ideas and issues, interleaved with a good sense of humour, good characters, interesting premise, and some good dialogue. MW found it easy to read, enjoyable, interesting. CW was happy to pick book up: it had enough new ideas and took different directions. MT was devouring it!

AA thought it terrific, beautifully written and Conradesque; a story of love and belonging, faith and fidelity; humanity and inhumanity, elevation and destruction, responsibility and deceit; individual and groups; fragility of everything; collapse of our planet as expected; suspense eg at the airport and carried on to the end. It progressed slowly; but he was keen to read on.

But JH found it a chore, an interesting idea made dreary. And for Willm, this wasn’t about strange new things but a rehash of tired old things. He found the language and structure exceedingly simplistic, which had the virtue, probably unintended, of making it a very rapid read.

CB liked the imagination and level of detail in the journey and on Oasis. It made a rich context for the story. Plenty of drama with the Jump (the way the spacecraft gets to the planet), the risks Peter, the protagonist faces on the strange planet and the guarded and somewhat one dimensional relationships on the base. Nice touches:  layers of detail: language, form, houses, sleeping etc of the Oasans; gradual engagement with Grainger, chapter headings as the last phrase in the chapter; plants, animals and landscape on the planet; rain and atmosphere; humour of misunderstandings e.g. passing water.

MW thought the Sci Fi ideas showed good imagination; but it was not such a big idea as Faber’s Under The Skin. CW thought some elements such as the building of the church and living with Oasans lacked interest: the Oasans were already converted. But he liked the imagery of the planet and the Brassiere and the mix of settings and detail eg cars. It raised questions: Why did the Oasans make crops in exchange for the drugs? Can you really screen out human characteristics so people can live in a sterile environment.  But made you think. SC too liked the sci-fi flavour - in a way this helps to unshackle the narrative from everyday distractions of earth-bound living, gives the author a chance to really fly with his ideas

For JH, the highpoint was Tesco going bankrupt. What was this book? Space exploration, colonisation, collapsing love story, faith collapsing? Interesting about how an ex-pat works in relation to people at home. But we should focus on solving our planet’s issues not spending money on space exploration.

MT found the religion interesting: related to his experience in a religious family.

AA thought it disappointing that Oasans spoke English and have a quasi human form. But liked the idea of faith as Peter’s latest addiction; the Eulogy for Severin; the proposal to Bea; the birth and death amongst the Oasans, the rain, alternation of earth and planet; the difficulty of communication when the “shoot” is less personal; humans being dependent on vulnerable people. Backstory was clear and consistent. Interesting: USIC staff keeping separate from their past; Tartaglione’s rant was good. Faber rejected his parents beliefs. Is this book about religion or human beings?

RV highlighted a passage from the very start (page 3) which shows both ideas and humour.

“Of course, everybody on earth had the power to reshape reality. It was one of the things Peter and Beatrice talked about a lot. The challenge of getting people to grasp that life was only as grim and confining as you perceived it to be. The challenge of getting people to see that the immutable facts of existence were not so immutable after all. The challenge of finding a simpler word for ‘immutable’ than ‘immutable’.”

He was struck by at least 50 different paragraphs or sentences, for example, when Peter looks through the Visitor’s Book in the Heathrow Prayer Room; his rather amazing sermon for Severin’s funeral; his interesting discussion of translations (“once it dawned on you that everyone who wasn’t a native speaker of Canaanite Hebrew, Koine Greek or Galilean Aramaic was at an equal disadvantage, you could relax and feel that Scripture in your own tongue was as good as Scripture in anyone else’s”); his lovely use of arcane English: “frankly barmy / he pointed out, with stonkingly obvious good sense”.

RV found Peter’s voice very authentic, and extremely different to the protagonist in Under the Skin – he clearly can write in very different ways. In some ways the book reminded RV of a science fiction novella he read 40+ years ago – A Case of Conscience, James Blish - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Case_of_Conscience (a book that was very powerful at the time and one that has clearly stayed with him) also about a missionary to an alien race.

The book is by no means perfect (why does Peter not ask more questions of the Oasans, and the M6 does not go south of Birmingham!).  But it captures someone’s clear faith very well, and his ability to describe and discuss faith is extremely good.

For WM, the social references at the Base were all curiously anachronistic: posters depicting Rosie the Riveter, and the men eating lunch on a skyscraper girder; the music of Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra; and odd turns-of-phrase. All this from before the author was born and as the novel was set in the future, even if ever-so-slightly, most peculiar.  And, why on earth (literally) would they choose Peter of all available Christians? Why is everyone at Base (apart Grainger) so unbelievably passive? Why do two people go awol? Something in the white flower foodstuffs?

Many quotations from the Bible, as might be expected, but is this really the way evangelical spouses communicate with each other?  And, do they feel the need to explain the ‘real’ meaning  of the citations?  E.g. ‘Philippians 4:6 reassures us “be careful for nothing (i.e. don’t be anxious about anything)” ‘. On page 162  our hero writes to his wife that John said “Love not the world nor the things of the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, etc.etc.”  Although she is the one who converted him, and probably just as familiar with this quote as he is, he then goes on to ‘mansplain’ that John was being too harsh and that Jesus understood, and God understands, that people have a whole life to live before they die. ‘Mansplaining’ apart, I would have that thought that being cognisant of what Jesus understood and God understands is quite possibly a little above his pay grade.

Now, the author may just have been illustrating that this type of evangelical fervour is somewhat self-absorbed, or self-referential, and that Peter was hiding any real understanding, feelings or empathy behind a cloak of quotations. However, it seems to me that the author is fundamentally in sympathy with our Father Peter and that the whole ‘novel’ is really Saint Michel’s epistle to the converted, to the ignorant, and to naive 13 year olds who are seeking the ‘meaning of life’ and the answers that religion might provide. The medium is the message.            

SC agreed. He could have done without the detailed discussion of specific Bible passages, particularly as ‘translated’ by Peter. Was the author preaching, maybe trying to show off the depth of his Bible studies knowledge, or simply trowelling it on more thickly than the narrative really required? SC’s money’s on the latter. What was the author really trying to do here- was he coming up with a strong critique of Christian theology (which would have been ambitious), or making a more focused and barbed point about the innate flimsiness of any belief structure based on a single book, no matter how well it’s been parroted?

SC thought perhaps it’s a great love story. From quite early on,  he was hoping Grainger and Peter would get it on. The finale, which is not necessarily as expected, is sad and reminds him a bit of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex becomes a tool of the establishment.

SC thought the book is not without problems. The idea that Peter, a former criminal drug addict, has been selected to come and minister to an alien race which has ‘discovered’ God through a predecessor, purely to ‘keep them sweet’ and continue the trade in whiteflower products, is tenuous to say the least. Any such discovery of alien life would have triggered the most intricately analytical and complex project to learn as much as possible about these beings. Instead they are regarded as freaks and a hindrance to the aims of the colony. Really difficult to relate to this particular angle.

However, if somehow one lets that go, the idea of a drug-addict religious zealot (and his hornily zealous wife) arriving to build a church and adopt the missionary position somehow fits the plot, as does his gradual progress to ‘going native’ - a touch of Heart of Darkness here? SC liked the descriptions of the alien world and its inhabitants, though felt that it was rather lacking in detail, perhaps deliberately so.

CB liked the way Peter as a human being comes through the beliefs, whether his sexual urges, his doubts, his difficulty in communicating with his wife, his enjoyment of the calmness of the Oasan community, his despair at the sterile life of the base. In the end, his human experience overtakes his faith. CB really liked the description of faith: a strong belief but could equally be a human construct plus confusion of when God is responding or whether it is just a human reaction (eg when he wants to talk to his wife in the car on his first journey to the Oasans.

CB liked the development of the effect of being apart in a relationship and having very different experiences is well developed over time with a backdrop of disasters back on earth contrasting with Peter’s positive experience of his ministry and mainly calm life amongst the Oasans. By contrast, the community of people at the base are happy to leave their old lives behind and are self sufficient and work focussed which makes the times when people break out of this more full of tension and pathos (Grainger, Tartaglione, Kurtzberg).

SC agreed Bea’s bulletins from home kept ringing uncannily true, and all the more unsettling for that. Her growing anger with him and his lack of empathy with real world problems was believable, as was her increasingly dicey predicament. MW thought the relationship with three “women” the most interesting including deteriorating relationship with his wife, development of relationship with Grainger; weak character, end not satisfactory, lacked something.

For MT, the letters felt real and like his own experience, including the drifting apart. The Grainger relationship was interesting; the tension was good as they didn’t develop the relationship; felt the ending was left unresolved but liked the tension of this. AA asked has the relationship ended because it was based on faith which is lost? He liked the summing up of Peter’s dependency as being more on a woman than on Jesus.

For CB, the context at home feels like a very real threat as society slowly then more quickly starts to break down. And serves to alienate the couple further. Bea’s reactions are well developed even via the medium of letters. And the asserted purpose of the base as a base for the rich to escape to eventually comes out along with the reasons Peter is asked to minister to the Oasans.

So we found lots to like and be interested in as well as things to really dislike. An average score of 6.82 with a range of 2 - 8.5.

Scores: John 3.5; Mark T 8.5; Andrew 8.5; Chris 7.4; Mark W 7.2; Chris 7.75; Willlm 2; Steve: 8.5
Richard: 8