‘Book of Strange New Things’ exudes considerable charm

Hogarth, 512 pages, $28

I would almost like to say, “Read this book,” and leave it with that. Because its charms, and they are considerable, are so tied with discovering what the heck is going on. That challenges a reviewer, because almost anything I tell you will spoil a moment of discovery.

Let’s start with this:

Set in a not-so-distant future, this is a story about a man tossed into an unfamiliar setting who struggles to find his place. It’s also about near-universal issues of faith and doubt. It’s about the difficulty of maintaining relationships as, inevitably, the parties involved discover they aren’t changing in the same ways.

The book takes faith and religion seriously and respectfully. Doubt doesn’t necessarily represent a refutation of faith. And the faith we’re talking about is Christianity, served straight up. Science fiction has a few other classic examples of making Christianity central to a story in a good way, but not many.

The main character here is named Peter, which cannot possibly be a coincidence. Peter is on his way to pastor a congregation of aliens. A prior pastor gave them a Bible, which they called the “Book of Strange New Things.”

There’s not a word of exposition in this book from an omniscient observer. If Peter isn’t looking, feeling, hearing, reading or thinking about something at that moment, it’s not there. And Peter is an oddly uncurious fellow about a lot of things. He doesn’t quickly get around to asking himself questions or looking for details that a reader is likely to get impatient about. That means the reader’s discovery takes a while. Almost 500 pages of while.

There’s a plot, of course. What do the aliens need with a pastor? Why are they attracted to Christianity? What’s going on back on Earth, where natural and human-made calamities sound, well, apocalyptic, and Peter’s pregnant wife is having her own crisis of faith and doubt? What is really the purpose of the human colony on Oasis?

Not every question is fully answered, and even the details that are revealed don’t always hang tightly together.

For a reader willing to accommodate Michel Faber’s pacing and willing to take delight in the details of the journey, it’s a book that will mostly be satisfying.