We first meet Peter as he is on his way to the airport, and regular Faber readers will no doubt be reminded of the story ‘A Hole with Two Ends’ from The Fahrenheit Twins. He has been hired, we learn, by a largely faceless corporation called USIC, to travel to a far off star and preach the word of the Lord to a race of creatures who also inhabit the world that the faceless corporation is looking to do something with. Peter, then, is something of a religious sort as is his other half. These days he is married, to Beatrice, and he considers himself saved – thanks in part to Beatrice and in part to Christ the saviour. The narrative centres upon a man called Peter, a man who has, in the past, lived through hardships, in the form of drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, violence. The first way in which The Book of Strange New Things is unusual in its choice of protagonist.

This is a novel about marriage and faith, about the pressures imposed upon marriage by unusual circumstances, about understanding, about limits, social interaction it is unusual in a number of ways. The Book of Strange New Things is unusual sci-fi in the way that Under the Skin was unusual sci-fi – but The Book of Strange New Things doesn’t have much else in common with Under the Skin. If that isn’t enough for you, if, say, you’ve only read The Crimson Petal and the White, or saw Under the Skin at the cinema and have been meaning to get round to reading something by Michel Faber, and need a little more to go off, we’ll give you a little more (but know, as you read a little more, that you are robbing yourself of unusual pleasures, grain by grain). If Michel Faber is enough of a recommendation to you, stop reading this review.

I say all of this to impart one important fact to you: The Book of Strange New Things is a great book to read without knowing a thing about it. Inside, there were biographical details, and a brief three or four line precis that talked of ‘love in the face of death’ and ‘the search for meaning in an unfathomable universe’ but not much more. Right at the back of the book (which is quite a way, the proof clocks in at about 550 pages), there is an acknowledgement in which Faber notes his debt to Marvel comics and the writers of said comics – at which point I wondered (wrongly) if the book was going to be a novel in the vein of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

The hardbook proof was bright white with indented white lettering for the title and the author name, like The Beatles’ White Album. I started reading what is being described as Michel Faber’s third novel (only Under the Skin and The Crimson Petal and the White qualify as novels, the rest of his books are either novellas or short story collections apparently) without knowing a thing about it, other than it was written by Michel Faber, who I like.

Michel faber under the skin review