Book Review - Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things
Published by: Hogarth
Publication Date: October 6th, 2014
Format: Kindle, 594 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
Peter Leigh was an addict. But he found Bea and then he found God. Coincidentally on the same night. He has a small flock he ministers to but soon an opportunity arises that he can't refuse. USIC, an American corporation, wishes for him to be a missionary to the native population at one of their sites. The site just happens to be the planet Oasis. This is an opportunity to bring the word of God to a new species. An opportunity Peter can't pass up despite how hard his separation from Bea will be. His month long journey to Oasis leaves him disoriented. He wanders away from base camp into the wilderness, risking his very life. Thankfully the base's pharmacist Grainger finds him in time. Once he is healed he finally gets to meet the Oasans. He wasn't sure what to expect, but the ugly creatures before him speak English and are already devoted lovers of Jesus. While he has already made the leap to leave Earth and his wife, at least they could communicate while he stayed at the USIC base. But Peter thinks that to truly be the missionary he is supposed to be he must commit himself further to the Oasans. He decides to move to their settlement, C-2, and help them to build a church. A place in which their love for Jesus can be properly shown. Where he can be one with them and learn why they so responded to The Book of Strange New Things, which is their name for the Bible, and what he can do to help their faith grow. This is his life now. Nothing and no one will take it away from him. Not even Bea will stand in his way. And things aren't going well for Bea. USIC has plans for Oasis to embody its name because Earth is dying. Bea is alone and pregnant and natural disaster after natural disaster keeps compounding the problems. She is scared and her husband has abandoned her to be the mouthpiece of God when his own people, his own family, are dying. When he learns the truth behind the Oasans fate after a bad accident he realizes he has a choice to make; to return to a dying planet or to continue preaching to those who believe in miracles.
Do you want to read a book about a self-centered asshole who literally thinks that everything can be fixed just by his presence? Well then I have the book for you! Peter Leigh is the worst kind of man. Or, if I were as cynical as one member of my book club, just a man. He leaves behind his wife on a dying planet to be a missionary. Yes, you might say he is called, you might even say that being a missionary is a noble calling, but for me, someone who is called wouldn't be such a douchebag. Though there are those who think Trump is the messiah... So maybe we're supposed to identify with this horribly flawed individual? See that we might not be able to fix ourselves but can serve the greater good? Learn that his addiction was able to be overcome and he found a new path. But I just can't. He always puts himself first. Obviously replaced drugs with God. Risks others by doing stupid things. And he objectifies everyone. Women who are bitchy are obviously premenstrual, another woman could be pretty if she'd just watch what she ate and stopped aging, because otherwise he will call her porky. Seriously, porky!?! Just die! And of all the times he could have died and didn't? Well, that just broke my heart. Because he deserves death. He deserves it so much. The way he distances himself from his wife, he claims it's because of the new world he's experiencing, that what he left behind is no longer relevant, well you left behind a pregnant wife, I think that's pretty relevant. And then, when he finally learns that Oasans believe in God because they fervently need resurrection to be a reality due to the fact anything, even a small bump, could lead to death, he leaves them. He leaves them claiming it's because he misled them, but truly, it's because he's an asshole. And maybe, just maybe, it's dawning on him that his very presence isn't the answer to all problems. But let's take the cynical approach and think that he still believes that he is the answer. Technically the Oasans belief is stronger than ever when he leaves and returns to Earth to be with his wife despite the fact that Earth is about to die. The end of the world is imminent. So why would he return to certain death? Because he is so egocentric that he thinks his return to Earth will reverse climate change. That he will restore his wife's belief in God and that all will be well. He is deluded. He is an asshole. He needed to die. Is it wrong that I hope the Earth really is doomed just so he dies?
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Austen wrote what she knew, therefore in playing the tourist for her books we've covered a lot of places she went to. Yet this journey would be incomplete without the three most important places to her life; where she was born, where she lived, and where she died. Jane Austen was born in Steventon in Hampshire where her father served as rector. Many times when looking into the past it's about looking at where buildings used to be and that is sadly the case with the parsonage. Though the new parsonage which still stands was actually built by Jane's brother Edward some time after Jane's death. But the place of prime interest is the church, St. Nicholas's, where Jane went for twenty-six years of her life with her family to hear her father preach. A spire has been added since Austen’s lifetime, bearing a wind vane in the shape of a pen in her honor. Though that is probably small comfort to Jane who expected to live her entire life in this small community and instead ended up moving to the odious Bath when her father retired, making way for her brother James at the rectory. It must have been bittersweet to visit him in what was once her home. 
Though thankfully after time spent in Bath and various family homes Jane found her own home in Chawton where she resided for the last eight years of her life, which is now 
As for the sad conclusion to Jane's life... she was ill with what, we can not know for certain, but she was brought to Winchester by her sister and brother Henry for treatment. She died there on July 18th, 1817, at the age of 41 and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. She was much too young to die and could have given us so much more than just six novels. Thankfully Winchester Cathedral is a building she admired, because can you imagine how annoyed her ghost would be to be in a place she disliked? If she had died in Bath she'd be haunting the heck out of it! Her grave marker in the cathedral doesn't mention that she was a writer, so over the years through family and fans she now has a brass plaque and a memorial window. While in Winchester you can also see the house she died in on College Street, but I think that's a little morbid. Instead sit in quiet contemplation in the cathedral, look to her window and watch the light shine through. And perhaps think of Mr. Collins and have a good laugh because she, like Lizzy Bennet, was never one to take life too seriously. 
