Skip to main content

The Book of Strange New Things

Book Review

Title: The Book of Strange New Things
Author: Michel Faber
Publisher: Canongate (2015)
Pages: 585

Search for meaning is one of the things that distinguishes intelligent life from others.  How much does religion help in the process?  Michel Faber’s novel, The Book of Strange New Things, takes Christianity with its Bible (which is called ‘The Book of Strange New Things’ by the inhabitants) to Oasis, a planet in a distant galaxy. 

“I’m an alcoholic,” says the protagonist.  “Me too,” says Grainger, a prominent character.  “It never leaves you,” responds the protagonist.  Grainger smiles.  “Like God, huh?  More loyal than God.”

The protagonist is Peter Leigh, a Christian pastor who has been appointed by a shady American corporate named USIC [whose expansion is never given; does it sound like You-Sick?] to take Jesus and his gospels to the native population of Oasis.  Before becoming a pastor, Peter was an alcoholic and a drug addict who stole others’ money and things in order to get drugs and liquor.  He met Beatrice, a nurse, in a hospital and they fell in love.  Bea had endured a terrible childhood whose scars left an ocean of longing in her which, perhaps, only a reclaimed addict could satisfy.  The two marry and become a very loving couple.  It is Bea who fills Peter’s heart with Jesus and the gospels.  Peter never reverts to his addictions though he uses the present tense while speaking to Grainger on Oasis: “I’m an alcoholic.”

Financial hurdles attract Peter to the prospects offered by USIC.  Peter and Bea are separated by galaxies.  The native people of Oasis had accepted Jesus as their God and Saviour even before Peter reached their planet.  But the former pastor had abandoned them; he just disappeared.  The Oasans [as they are called by the USIC scientists and engineers] cut off food supply to the humans until a new pastor is provided.  God is the ultimate meaning and solace for the Oasans who don’t even want the Bible to be translated into their language.  The relative mysteriousness of English renders the religion more magical to them. 

Religion is magic.  It is addictive.  It gives hope. 

But none of the scientists and engineers taken to Oasis from the earth require god or religion.  They tolerate Peter because their food depends to a considerable extent on his services to the native population.  The scientists and engineers are also people recruited by USIC after a lot of screening.  They also had a shady past like Peter.  But their profession and its skills which find a new playfield on Oasis give a new meaning to their life and they don’t revert to their addictions.  They are all meritorious people who had gone astray for one reason or the other.  The earth can destroy the meritorious.  Oasis can regenerate them.

Oasis breaks Grainger, however.  She reverts to alcoholism as the craving for normal human love takes shape in her.  She wants to meet her father, the person who meant everything to her as a child. 

Peter is broken too in spite of his deep faith in God.  In fact, the novel suggests that his faith is shaken when Bea finds the earth of the 21st century a terrible place to live on.  “There is no God,” writes Bea using the interstellar email system provided by USIC and Peter is jolted.  Bea is breaking up.  Peter has to be with her. 

The novel explores human love, love for god and discovering meaning in one’s profession as means of making life meaningful.  It is a pleasant read all through.  Faber’s style is simple and captivating.  Yet nothing much really happens in the novel, pretty long as it is.  One can read it delightfully as a narrative about an alien planet and the human struggle to domesticate it.  The rest lies beneath as an undertone. 

One of those undertones I personally found fascinating is Peter’s doubts about his own faith toward the end of the novel:

The cynicism he’d thought he’d banished for ever was coursing through his system.  Placebo, all is placebo.  Swallow the pills and feel invigorated while the cells die inside you.  Hallelujah, I can walk on these septic feet, the pain is gone, barely there, quite bearable, praise the Lord. [Page 551]



Comments

  1. MariaJanuary 24, 2018 at 5:04 PM

    Peter is broken too in spite of his deep faith in God. In fact, the novel suggests that his faith is shaken when Bea finds the earth of the 21st century a terrible place to live on. “There is no God,” writes Bea using the interstellar email system provided by USIC and Peter is jolted. Bea is breaking up. Peter has to be with her.

    ______________________
    Latest News India | Online Breaking News

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shilpa GargJanuary 24, 2018 at 9:40 PM

    Sounds like an interesting read though this is a genre which I havent explored much! Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 24, 2018 at 9:44 PM

      The genre might mislead you. It is a genre-defying novel. It is not sci-fi. The author is not at all interested in science and technology, nor in futurism.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more