Unusual.

Great book, very unusual. Not a rollercoaster ride, more of a pensive, slow burning SciFi. And one of the best narrations on audible.

9 people found this helpful

both enjoyable and frustrating

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber is one of the most difficult audio book I’ve attempted to review. Usually I enjoy a book or I get really irritated by it because the book falls short of what I know the author can do. This book I both enjoyed and found irritating.

It is the story of a Christian missionary who is hired by a major corporation to travel to Oasis, a distant planet, where he is to minister to the local non-human population. He was unable to bring his wife to Oasis, which causes a good deal of personal stress both for him and his wife. There is very little real action in the story. The book is primarily a study of the relationships among the minister, his wife, his fellow humans on Oasis and the non-humans to whom he ministers.

The author does a good job of developing characters that are three dimensional and relatable. Surprisingly, even several of the non-human characters were credible without overly compromising their non-human nature. The sense of culture shock experienced by the minister is credible, as is his reaction. Having spent a lot of time in other parts of the world myself I could relate to this part of the book.

What bothered me the most was the premise that a married missionary would be sent millions of miles from home without his wife. It is an obvious recipe for disaster and no respectable missionary organization would do such a thing nowadays. Even a cost conscious corporation would have researched the literature to take this into account.

It is difficult to understand the non-human interest in Christianity, as there is too little context for the non-human community. There is almost nothing about the native religious beliefs and what they saw in an alien religion from Earth. At least that would have provided a context for understanding their desire for a missionary.

This is a story that if you focus just on the development of characters and relationships it is quite enjoyable, however there are so many questions left unanswered by the end of the book that it is also frustrating, not to mention the gaps in credibility.

Perhaps this was meant to be the first in a trilogy of books. If it is, I’m not sure I’ll try the subsequent books.

The narrator did a fine job.

7 people found this helpful

The Book with a Strange New Setting

This book has received much critical acclaim, the New York Times Book Review labeling it “the literature of enchantment.” Another reviewer pronounced it the best novel of the year. With an interesting premise of a missionary traveling to another galaxy, I eagerly went off my usual audiobook diet of non-fiction to try more exotic fare.

Fans of Marcel Faber will no doubt enjoy more of his elegant prose and detailed character development. And if there were an Olympics for audio book narration, Josh Cohen would take home the gold medal with his uncanny mastery of countless voices and accents. Faber explained in an NPR interview that he wrote this book after his wife was diagnosed with incurable cancer, and his understandably dystopian world view definitely comes through in his writing. Although some may categorize this book as science fiction, Faber uses the alien civilization and distant human outpost as more of a device for examining estrangement and relationships.

That said, I found the book ultimately frustrating, and all the favorable reviews surprising. Science fiction fans will probably not consider this book in the genre at all, given how incidental are the details of the other world and its inhabitants. If one would have thought that the first contact with other life forms would have been a momentous historical event, none of the characters in the book apparently think so. The missionary, appropriately named Peter, spends no time reflecting on this singular marvel, but rather sets off for the distant galaxy as if he were traveling to Africa or somewhere, giving more thought to things like how his cat will do in his absence.

Much of the book is devoted to Peter’s communications with his wife back on Earth, who he corresponds with via a crude form of intergalactic email (apparently attachments are too data intensive, sort of like in the early days of dial up). Readers hoping a lot more will happen in this story will be disappointed. For example, we learn that Peter has been hired to replace the pastor who preceded him on the alien planet, who has gone missing without a trace. Tantalizingly named Kurtzberg (hint, Conrad), I won’t drop any spoilers here, but suffice it to say Peter never ventures up river.

Similarly, readers hoping that something enlightening (heck, anything!) will come of the biblical exegesis Peter presents to the childlike aliens will have little to show for a lot of reading, except perhaps Peter’s adept rephrasing of the New Testament into words more easily pronounced by the locals.

In the end, I found myself thinking the setting the author chose was distracting to his purpose. The novel could as easily taken place in any far off corner of the Earth, like Peter Matthiessen’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord. And then readers like me who were hoping for something more like Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris would not feel like they bought the wrong book.

But still, that British narrator’s American accents are crazy good…

31 people found this helpful

As Odd and Dispiriting as it is Capitvating

If you could sum up The Book of Strange New Things in three words, what would they be?

Lonely, cosmic heartbreak.

What did you like best about this story?

The fantastical elements of the book either creep up on you so slow or are thrust upon you so fast that you're as genuinely jarred as the main character upon realizing that the world you're visiting is unlike anything you'd expected or experienced. This happens because of how believable and grounded so much of the story is in the things we understand and can relate to - loneliness, crisis of faith, determination of will and the inability to communicate with a far away loved one, among others.

What does Josh Cohen bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I wouldn't necessarily say that Faber's story doesn't stand well enough on simply the merits of his words, because he's crafted something that's at once both thrillingly alien and resonantly human at the core. But having experienced his novel through Josh Cohen's mammoth range of raw, realized characterizations, I couldn't possibly fathom the story divorced of him.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The third-to-last and second-to-last chapters - in the infirmary with Jesus Lover 5 and in Peter's Church with him speaking in all Oassan - are both equally crushing.

Any additional comments?

On top of his skillful handling of international accents that are individually crafted for every single character so that you know that person intimately the moment they appear and reappear in the story, Cohen's unique and jaw-dropping representation of the Oassans' gargling, guttural dialect is something masterful to behold.

9 people found this helpful

Better than science fiction

What did you love best about The Book of Strange New Things?

A slow-reveal sci-fi, this novel clobbered me with its plot, unusual alien life and deep humanity.

What other book might you compare The Book of Strange New Things to and why?

It stands alone, a one-off that deserves a wide readership.

Which scene was your favorite?

When the alien Jesus Lover 5 teaches Pastor Peter about Christianity in the face of death and distance, I shed a tear.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

NO! I wanted it to last longer, so I teased out the readings. Perhaps a movie based on it would ease my need for more....

Any additional comments?

Don't be put off by the fact that the main character is a Christian minister to an alien world. Spreading the Christian word is not the point of the novel. On the other hand, it's not exactly NOT the point of the novel either. Read it and you'll understand that fine distinction.

8 people found this helpful

Where's the plot?

I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. Many times I thought, "here comes the hook.". Then that fizzled away. I might ask for a refund on this one. I just wish some real conflict had happened.

12 people found this helpful

You might love it...me, not so much

Not my kind of book. Very little actually happens - it is all description. I like to buy long books bc if it's good, you have a lengthy time to enjoy it. This book made me impatient for it to get on with it.

7 people found this helpful

Long and tedious

What would have made The Book of Strange New Things better?

I couldn't understand a word the Oasans were saying--it all sounded like static and was so drawn out that I found myself leaving the room sometimes until that part was over. The book didn't have a conclusive ending either.

What do you think your next listen will be?

don't know

How did the narrator detract from the book?

perhaps not his fault, but the words said by the Oasans sound like dragged-out static on a radio.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

not much--the first part was interesting

Any additional comments?

I just couldn't recommend it. Go read "Under the Skin" instead....a better book by the same author.

9 people found this helpful

Not a sci-fi book, it's missionaries in space!

What disappointed you about The Book of Strange New Things?

It's not a sci-fi book, it's a Christian Missionary in space, it's not even funny like book of Mormon. It's straight up boring. There's nothing that makes me rethink my view of religion, it's just a lonely missionary who doesn't want to spank it to a picture of his separated wife. The aliens are just stand ins for the "godless natives" of any other Christian novel and his crew mates are the stereo typical unbelieving people who don't understand his holy plight.

What do you think your next listen will be?

I don't know, the manual for my laptop as dictated by alexa. The reader/performer was great but omg this story was boring.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Good reader, great fake American accents but the alien accents were hard to understand. Dear author, you should have left the aliens speaking in alien, and just had a universal translator, save our ears.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

yah, i could return it. That's the redeeming part.

Any additional comments?

Skip. This. Book.

5 people found this helpful

Christians in Space

Any additional comments?

Having lived among and worshiped with contemporary British evangelical Christians, I thought that Cohen rendered the hero pastor (Peter's) earnestness and naivety quite accurately. Peter is confident that he can hear the whisperings of God's will in all he does...until he isn't.
The fall away from faith is predictable as a plot, but how it happens is thoughtfully and sensitively described. Never mind the improbabilities of the plot. This is more about the spiritual journey of a single man than the alien world around him.

2 people found this helpful