The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel
by Michel Faber
The Book of Strange New Things (8/25/2014)
The first chapter of Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things lures the reader into joining Pastor Peter Leigh on his journey to an extra-earthly world named Oasis where he will fulfill his assignment as Minister (Christian) to Indigenous Population. In that first chapter we watch an ordinary married couple who passionately love each other and have committed themselves to the success of Peter's mission for the ambiguous USIC. Peter feels both honored that the USIC has selected him from many other applicants and conflicted that it did not choose his wife Beatrice, his inspiration and his guide thus far in his life, to accompany him. We also see the anxiety they both feel at the thought of a six month separation.
The next one hundred pages slowly progress as Peter arrives after a month's travel and acclimates himself to his sterile accommodations, his new diet of pseudo food, and the common bantering of the other USIC employees. He meets his caustic and unfriendly personal assistant, Alex Grainger whose purpose is to see to his every need and to accompany him safely to and from the Oasan people
Early in the development of their relationship, she realizes that Peter is "not an uneducated holy roller from Hicksville;" however, Peter's unemotional responses to situations, his wide eyed idealism and naiveté contradicts his past. He tells Grainger, "I never went to Bible School. I went to the University of Hard Drinking and Drug Abuse." Although his character morphs several times throughout the book, Peter remains aloof, pedantic, and begs the reader to ask, "What is happening?"
Faber's book defies a specific genre categorization. Is it a parable of a journey and thus the naming of the characters Peter and Beatrice not a coincidence? Peter's first meeting with an Oasan overwhelms him with joy as the Oasan, whose physical face reminds him of two three month old twin fetuses, tells Peter that the others have prayed for his coming. Unlike the Biblical Saint Peter he does not need to evangelize; therefore, the theme cannot relate to evangelizing Christians who enter a foreign world, attempt to bring them to Christ, then plunder their land. No, Peter has entered Paradise. Unlike Dante's Beatrice, Peter's Beatrice is not by his physical side as she has always been. When he emails her of his good news, she replies with the first of many tragic stories which will soon consume her apocalyptic world. As his faith and conviction grows stronger, Bea's grows weaker.
Peter begins to grow more distant emotionally to Bea's pregnancy, in which he neither expected or rejoiced. His life with the Oasans fulfills him. He farms with them; he attempts to learn their language. Then, is this book a character study of a man who deeply loves his wife, accepts the challenge which USIC presents to him, and loses faith in his ability to be the best person to both entities? Although the Oasans do not share human appearance or the human tendency to reveal and reflect on the past or the future. they show outstanding ability to return Peter's love for them. Literally it takes a lightning bolt striking the vehicle in which Grainger escorts him back to the base, to force the reticent Grainger to reveal the mission and his role in that mission that USIC hopes to accomplish. Peter's self loathing and his neglect of Bea's emotional state sends him to despair. His epiphany that he fears he will never minister again makes him realize that his love for Bea is greater than the project.
I have to admit that science fiction is not my favorite genre; however, Faber writes so persuasively that I actually rooted for the Oasans and Peter's relationship to succeed. I did not feel as if I were reading about someone who was an interplanetary traveler. One has to read the book to understand the next statement: I struggled to try to skip s's and t's in pronunciation of words. I felt pain for Peter's and Bea's situation. I believe that each person who reads this book will take a special memory from it. Although it is nearly 500 pages and it moves slowly in the first half, it is definitely one of the most thought provoking books I have read in awhile.
The Devil in the Marshalsea
by Antonia Hodgson
A Man's Home is Not His Castle (3/15/2014)
In my city our county prison looks like a castle. Supposedly the huge stones in its structure were used as ballast in the many English ships used to travel to Colonial America. Some might smile when they hear the pun: "A man's home is his castle," but no modern jail or ones like Marshalsea in 17th century London are places of joy to their inhabitants.
When we meet Thomas Hawkins, estranged son of a well-to-do vicar, we know he is headed for trouble, which is Marshalsea Gaol and Court Palace and its head keeper William Acton. Defiant, reckless, and heavily in debt, Hawkins wins at a card game that will temporarily get his creditors off his back, but on his way home he is lured by a link boy into the hands of robbers. Beaten and robbed his landlord turns him over to Jakes, a warrant officer, who escorts him to Marshalsea and the five days of hell that follow.
When asked by one of the characters what he does, Hawkins flippantly replies, "I am a gentleman, as little as possible." However, in his five days at Marshalsea he endures a lot. He is beaten, left for dead in The Strong Room with the deceased bodies of prisoners whose relatives do not have the money to claim the bodies, falls in love, loses a friend, and solves a murder that has plagued the King's Marshal, Sir Philip Meadows.
The reader is faced with the horrid conditions of debtors' prisons where everything is for sale. Marshalsea has two parts: The Masters Side and The Common Side. Luckily for Tom, he is thrown in the Masters Side because Samuel Fleet his roommate and fellow scoundrel
has offered him free room and board. For the first twenty-four hours it doesn't seem too bad. It has a pub, a restaurant, and prisoners have freedom of movement during daylight hours.
Tom's penchant for finding trouble or it finding him happens fast. Hodson's well-researched storyline offers an array of characters. She keeps the reader guessing the identity of the murderer; and when the last page is finished it screams, "Tom is most certainly returning to let readers know what trouble he finds next." At least I hope she writes a sequel.
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