I first read Faber back when his Crimson Petal and the White was published. It was a Victorian page-turner, nothing at all that suggested that he would turn toward science fiction. I read half of Under the Skin, and was bored by it (I also felt that the movie, which was quite different from the novel, was a failure). But the premise of The Book of Strange New Things (Amazon.com, Amazon UK) seemed interesting.
The publisher’s blurb sums it up quite well, avoiding spoilers:
“Peter Leigh is a missionary called to go on the journey of a lifetime. Leaving behind his beloved wife, Bea, he boards a flight for a remote and unfamiliar land, a place where the locals are hungry for the teachings of the Bible – his ‘book of strange new things’. It is a quest that will challenge Peter’s beliefs, his understanding of the limits of the human body and, most of all, his love for Bea.”
Two things bothered me in this book. First, it was overly wordy; Faber could have cut 100 pages from the novel without impacting the story. And it wasn’t just longer sections that could have been cut; many paragraphs could have been halved, or at least trimmed. It seemed like this was a draft, without any serious editing. Or, that the author just wanted to ramble a lot.
The second was the message of the book. It’s not clear if this novel is intended to present a Christian world-view, or simply to use Christianity as a vehicle for examining the relationship between humans and an alien species. The fact that this species accepts Christianity so willingly – we later learn that a previous missionary had started the process – is odd, and isn’t explained. For, after all, wouldn’t that be the most interesting element to examine? How did a single missionary – before Peter Leigh – manage to convert some of these aliens? How could he have made parallels between the teachings of an Earthly religion and their own existence, when they don’t seem to have the same existential questions as humans regarding such things as death and the afterlife? What universalities are there between these two species? The aliens merely parroted the words they heard; they showed no true understanding of the teachings that Leigh gave them.
A large part of the book is made up of emails that Peter exchanges with his wife Bea. There’s a big deal made around these emails, going through a device nicknamed a “Shoot.” (We’d just call it a computer…) And, at one point, a character explains that these emails cost $5 million to send or receive, which is simply ludicrous, given that this is a world where a company on Earth has colonized another planet. If they could afford all that the colonization represents, clearly they’ve mastered the technology that allows them to send and receive text messages. Then, near the end, Peter finds that one of his emails has been censored; it did contain some bits that the company might not have want shared, but why did none of his previous email get censored? And why didn’t his wife’s? She was telling him some pretty terrible things about events on Earth. It seems the censorship thing was just a poorly thought up plot mechanism prodding Peter to make a decision, but it showed a lack of overall attention to the plot.
I admit that, in the last quarter of the book, I was skimming more than reading, as it had simply become tedious and there was little going on; it was just more of the same after the halfway point. The ending was somewhat anticlimactic, and really doesn’t say much about the character, or his situation. I won’t say more about that, but the book simply fizzles out at the end.
I’m not disappointed I read this book, but it’s not very memorable. It’s part religion, part science fiction, and it’s just not a good enough story; and I’m not sure if there’s enough science fiction to appeal to fans of that genre, or enough religion to please those who seek that.