Reviews

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

zmull's review against another edition

2.0

I know that I am often swayed in my opinions by reviews. For that reason, I try to avoid them before I read something. About half way through The Book of Strange New Things I couldn't resist checking a few. I was curious, not so much about the critical opinion of the book, which I assumed was high based on the cover pull quotes and the marketing campaign, but because of the hard to miss racism and hints of homophobia. One character is literally compared to a monkey. Nearly every female character is described as "butch." What I found is almost no mention of these issues and an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the book. It's difficult to square the book I read with the reviews. The story follows a pastor sent to another planet to minister to the aliens there. The best sections of the book involve Peter, the main character, separated from his wife, and the slow unraveling of their marriage. There's a rawness to those scenes, especially the hopelessness of the minister and the anguish of the wife. But Peter has frustratingly underwritten motivations for his actions once on the planet Oasis. Faber seems to know this and plants the idea early on that the only people hired to travel to Oasis are people who can easily leave loved ones behind. Why this would be, given later revelations about the nature of the project, is hard to understand. Peter's life on Oasis is needlessly mysterious, with all of the human characters acting like they have a secret when they really don't. The aliens, the Oasans, are total cyphers. They have no personalities, no clear motivations for accepting Jesus (except a fear of death), and no social interactions outside of communicating with Peter. Worse, there's no conflict. They want to be Christians, Peter shows up and teaches them about Jesus. That's it. All of the tension in the story comes either from the vague mysteries of the earth people or from the, admittedly beautiful, husband/wife dynamic. David Mitchell called this novel a "masterpiece." Clearly, I'm missing something.

baker75's review against another edition

5.0

Another masterpiece from Faber: haunting, elegiac, and beautifully constructed. The Book of Strange New Things will stay with me for a long time.

erica_palmisano's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The characters honestly drove me nuts. It's a story about exploration and yet the in-curiosity of the main character (and many of the main characters around them) was just overwhelmingly annoying to me. I know that's part of the plot but it was just unjustifiable. Also, only the (few) female characters had a real humanity to them and one of them got called "hysterical" for being justly angry, so I found that pretty alienating too. Maybe you'll find it less annoying, but I dragged myself through the 17 hours. Some cool world-building and writing but the juice was not worth the squeeze for me. 

cmvcaulfield's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

tomstbr's review against another edition

4.0

Not what you expect. A good example of lit crossed with SF. Beautifully written with some fantastic characters, the symbolism is what really drove it home for me.

lsparrow's review against another edition

3.0

The premis of the book was fascinating to me - Christian missionary to alien planet. As a child of missionaries I am always interested in where stories of missionaries go and I love science fiction - what could be better. What I most enjoyed about the book was the questions is raised in my thoughts (about cultural norms, time, individuality, conflict, interpersonal contection) - perhaps not in the ways intended - questions about the author and his views on culture and race(some of which I felt in disagreement with) as well as my own experiences and thoughts about this. I definitely questioned if the author has truly experienced culture shock. I could not decide if I was irritated by the main character or if he just did not make any sense - all the individual components of him made sense but together it just seemed a very unlikely combination of characteristics that just made no sense to me and seemed to be unlikely in an individual. Definitely do not read this book for the plot as it doesn't go very far and it ends quite suddenly for no apparent reason. Overall I am more interested in this book as a starting point for discussions than for the writing or the story.

ryan885's review against another edition

4.0

First I have to start by saying I have never read a book like this before; by this I mean a romantic drama with Christianity built into its heart but taking place in a dystopian future where space flight and planetary conquest is possible! Certain parts of the book kept me intrigued while overall I was left wanting more! Would recommend reading this if looking for a little romantic inspiration.

savh4's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.5

the premise is really interesting. i wish there was more about the aliens and less descriptions of his balls sweating 

thatotherlisa's review against another edition

3.0

Another frustrating foray into gussied up genre literature. This time it’s science fiction, with an admittedly pretty great twist. Peter, our protagonist is a missionary going to minister to alien population. He leaves his wife back on earth, where, as we learn through a series of communications, everything is falling apart. Life in space is going splendidly, and the protagonist has to decide between his mission and his wife. Sounds super interesting, right?

And it was, maybe 40% of the time. At 500 pages long, this book just felt bloated, indulgent, and just not as good as all the glowing reviews suggested. There were a lot of meditations on faith and love and loss that just never connected for me. We spend a lot of time in Peter’s head, and I didn’t find him particularly compelling or comprehensible. This is, in part, my fault, as I find his particular brand of Christianity (close personal relationship with a God who is in charge of your life, all you need to do is have faith, and everything will be ok, etc.) hard to stomach. We experience this world and these events primarily through him, and he is the least interesting thing happening (except perhaps for the subplot with Grainger’s father, which… no).

That said, there’s still some pretty great stuff in here. The dynamics of the world’s longest distance relationship where everything is great for one party and everything is awful for the other was super compelling. I’d be 100% into an epistolary novel of the messages between Peter and his wife. The shadowy corporation running the settlement was intriguing and the twisty little pay-off on that was pretty fun.

I guess what I’m saying is that I loved all of the genre stuff and just couldn’t connect with the literary stuff. This got me thinking that maybe I DON’T love lit-fic/genre mash-ups as much as I thought. But then I remember The Bone Clocks, Station Eleven. I remember Margaret Atwood. I remember Kazuo Ishiguro.

I’ll keep this odd little sub-genre (or super-genre? I don’t know). And I’ll keep expecting more than this.

hoorayleigh's review against another edition

3.0

There wasn't a single likable character in this novel.