The Book of Strange New Things

by Michel Faber

“We alSo love thoSe who have no love for JeSuS. However, they will die.”

foreboding?

Peter hoped the Oasans didn’t ask to see a photograph of his dad, because his mother had destroyed them all. “Very

“Your wife find the Book,” said Jesus Lover Seventy-something. “Read, read, read, read before you. Learn the Pechnique of JeSuS. Then your wife come for you and Say, I have found the Book of SPrange New ThingS. Read now, you. We Shall noP periSh, buP have ePernal life.” Summarized like that, it sounded more like the serpent’s overtures to Eve in the Garden of Eden than Bea’s matter-of-fact allusions to Christianity in the hospital ward where she first met him. But it was interesting that the Oasan went to such strenuous effort to quote from John 3:16 verbatim. Kurtzberg must have taught them that. “Did Kurtzberg teach you that?” The Jesus Lover who’d spoken did not reply.

The Oasans believed themselves to be Christians, but their grasp of Christ’s teachings was remarkably weak. Their hearts were full of amorphous faith, but their minds lacked understanding—and they knew it.

“I’m crying because I’m happy,” she explained, as the sun allowed itself to be veiled in clouds, the air grew milder and a gentle breeze stroked their hair. “This is the happiest day of my life.”

well that was cool surp paradoxical

she was related to someone who was not a Jesus Lover, which caused her sadness, or something he interpreted as sadness.

In his own belief, Heaven was not located up in the sky; it had no astronomical coordinates; it co-existed with all things everywhere.

on heaven

“What do you call this place?” he’d asked several people several times. “Here,” they said. “This whole world,” he specified. “Not just your homes, but all the land around your homes, as far as you can see, and the places even further that you can’t see, beyond the horizon where the sun goes down.” “Life,” they said. “God,” they said.

“They will die,” he said. “With mediSine or with no mediSine, they will die forever.”

i like this section. i wonder how long i would read a book tht was only this kind of dialogue.

“Who’s that?” Peter said to Lover One as they drew near. “SbSfPh,” replied Lover One. “Not a Jesus Lover?” “No.”

this woud be so strange out of context

These ones here are generics.” “Name from where all other name come,” said Jesus Lover One.

!

LOOKING BACK, ALMOST CERTAINLY, THAT WAS WHEN IT HAPPENED.

uh oh. if this is grainger and the pastor getting together i will be very very very annoyed

“Severin died.” “Severin? The guy I traveled with?” “Yup.” “He’s

There were only six women, including Grainger; the rest were males, making Peter wonder if Severin had failed to win the respect of his female colleagues, or whether this simply reflected the gender distribution of the base.

:) multitasking the thoughts

Goodbye, Arthur Laurence Severin. Goodbye.”

wow quite te memorial sermon for a group of mixed religions. nice work sir

Are you sitting down? I hope so. Darling, I’m pregnant.

They were only rectangular slabs of steel and glass, not in the least human-looking, but still Peter was moved by their insensate confusion. Like all creatures in the universe, they were only waiting for the elusive light that would grant them purpose.

he knew it was important but he had no idea what he could or should do about it. He assumed that any other man would be imagining the intimate realities of being a father: the baby in his arms, the corporeal son or daughter bouncing on his knee, the kid’s high school graduation or whatever. He could imagine such scenes only in the most contrived and generic way, as if they were two-dimensional panels in a comic book written and drawn by shameless hacks.

this is kind of simiar to how ifeel about our inbility to get pregnnt. so far. for erica its real painan sadness but for me itsnot real loss...

“Your chariot awaits,” announced Grainger.

so here we learn that the intervierers learned that he was actually really selfocused and that the separation from his wife woukdnt drive him crazy...

“When Jesus walked the earth,” Peter continued, “people wrote down what He said and did, and after that, they wrote down the things that happened to His followers. But the Bible was begun in the time before Jesus came, the more ancient time when God seemed much further away and more mysterious, and it was harder to know for sure what He wanted. In those days, people told stories about God, and those stories are in the Bible too. Some of these stories require a lot of knowledge of the customs and places that existed before Jesus. Even among my own people, many don’t have that knowledge.”

this is a reallu good descipt.

Evidently, the Oasans had counted, at a glance, the number of booklets and—without any consultation or awkwardness—adjusted the logistics of distribution to ensure that the last few people in line weren’t left with nothing.

crazers

There was something poignant about the fact that her tongue, or vocal cords, or whatever it was she spoke with, could manage the words “alone” and “weak” without much trouble, but that the words “together” and “strong” were almost impossible for her to utter.

Peter had no time for that doctrine himself. Death was death, decay was decay, only the spirit endured.

p seems a bit dualistic--body bad skul good

Peter joked that if he got too tired while speaking, he could always just fall backward and have a sleep. His congregation nodded indulgently. To them, it was a sensible idea.

Or if he was about to disappear over the same horizon as Tartaglione and Kurtzberg.

what the reader wonders

The thing is, being a Christian is an enormous buzz: that’s what a lot of people don’t understand. It’s deep satisfaction. It’s waking up in the morning filled with excitement about every minute that’s ahead of you.”

t/f?

And I’m not only talking about bankruptcy. Some of the wealthiest people in America were murdered last week, dragged out of their homes and beaten to death. Nobody knows exactly why, but it happened during a power blackout in Seattle that lasted four days. All the systems that keep the city functioning ground to a halt. No paychecks, no automatic teller machines, no cash registers, no electronic security locks, no TV, no traffic control, no petrol

uh oh seattles down...

The cursor on the screen was still blinking under the word here.

iwonder wat the motivation for acjng him do this message is. plot, character developmemt, or just to stop the reader from getting too annoyed at p for not replying to his wife...

and had once even bedded down inside an industrial garbage skip with the lid closed over him—and was grateful to have the shelter. He could still remember his sense of wonder when, at some point during the night, the mound of garbage on which he lay started heating up, enveloping his half-frozen body with warmth. This unlikely, unexpected generosity from a non-human agency was an early foretaste of how he would feel in the bosom of Christ.

!

how prayer worked. That it wasn’t a matter of asking for things and being accepted or rejected, it was a matter of adding one’s energy—insignificant in itself—to the vastly greater energy that was God’s love. In fact, it was an affirmation of being part of God, an aspect of His spirit temporarily housed inside a body. A miracle similar, in principle, to the one that had given human form to Jesus.

cool descript of prayer

had grown to enjoy how boring she was. Her boringness was so perfect that it had transcended itself to become a kind of eccentricity, and her own unawareness of it was funny and sort of touching.

It suddenly occurred to Peter how odd it was, in the circumstances, that Stanko wasn’t carrying a weapon. In fact … no one was. In fact … in fact, had he seen a gun at all since coming to Oasis?

i was thinking the sme thing

“I just assumed you were busy,” he said diplomatically. Was this going to be the day when she accepted Jesus into her heart? He didn’t feel up to it.

Onto these nets they would distribute the different parts of the plants, each part according to its destiny.

the arrival of the swarm.

Her message, when it came, was brief. There is no God, she wrote.

Ack

overcome by a belief that other men had often described to him when he’d given them pastoral counseling—a deep, despondent conviction that no matter what they did, no matter how good their intentions, they were doomed to bitterly disappoint women.

There’s too much riding on this to fuck it up with an imperialist fiasco.”

uh wat?

There were many ways of becoming a Christian but the way that had worked for him was to switch off his capacity for cynicism, switch it off like a light.

His clumsy fingers were poised to type the words of Psalm 14:1: The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. But then God entered Peter’s heart and cautioned him that this would be stupid.

duh

was deluding myself. I am alone and frightened and married to a missionary who’s going to tell me that the fool has said in his heart there is no God, and if you don’t say it it will just be because you’re being diplomatic,

wow shes prescient

“Cáscaras, empty vessels, every single one of them!” declared Tartaglione, rearing up with such righteous vehemence that he farted. “This whole project is … nefasto. You cannot create a thriving community, let alone a new civilization, by putting together a bunch of people who are no fucking trouble! Scuzi, pardon me mama, but it cannot be done. You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed. The people who build it have got to be egomaniacs and lunatics, they’ve gotta want it so damn bad they’ll trample you underfoot, they’ve got to be charismatic and charming and they’ve got to steal your wife from under your nose and then sting you for a loan of ten bucks.

It just rains. What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax.”

The holy book he’d spent so much of his life preaching from had one cruel flaw: it was not very good at offering encouragement or hope to those who weren’t religious.

Lover Five nodded. Her bandaged hand screamed louder than any words of recrimination that there could be no trouble more serious than the trouble she was in. “So,” she confirmed, “you will fulfill the word of JeSuS Luke: you will leave the ninePy-nine in the wilderneS, and look for the one who iS loSP.”

wowzers

Belief was a place that people didn’t leave until they absolutely must.