A review by lsparrow
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

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.