The Book of Strange New Things

Loving this book so far–I think that Faber has pulled off something pretty amazing–this is a book that has devout Christian characters throughout, but is also a book that both atheists and fairly devout religious people can dig into and enjoy. No hard-and-fast answers (at least so far–I have 100 pages to go), lots of humans-being-human, and some almost magical-realism-sci-fi going on.

I have always liked books that defy my expectations. I have always appreciated stories that mimic life. Life is rarely wrapped up in a neat bow. Rarely do we get all the answers, rarely do we understand the motives of the people around us and rarely do we fully understand our own reactions to the things that happen to us. So, while there are many good - even great - books that spell out exact reasoning and motivations for the events contained within and that are neatly wrapped up by the closing page (and there are even more books that end abruptly with no real conclusion) this book does neither.

This book takes a really epic premise - being a Christian missionary to an alien race - and makes it more a story about human connection. It is a story about how the separation affects Peter's relationship with his wife, it's about how the people that work on the station Peter is sent to interact and form relationships. It's about how the “aliens” live in their communities and whether or not they are “freaks” or just a different kind of people.

There are no major action sequences, there are no tense conflicts, there are no wars or battles or escalations in Peter's experience. I'm not sure you learn any more about the motives of the USIC or the aliens by the end. There are no grand epiphanies. There is no black and white. There is no bad guy.

And that is what I found really intriguing. Faber has managed to imagine and present a set of extraordinary circumstances as they might actually happen with real characters who can be secretive, petty, overbearing, boring, judgmental and kind in turn, but without being caricatures.

So, my (rare) 5 stars are for good writing, creating a realistic human narrative within an extraordinary premise, allowing characters to keep their secrets, presenting a unique take on how “aliens” might behave and that the story was well-paced and compelling at 500 pages.

the book ends, but the story leaves many loose ends