- Michel Faber says he respects Christianity even though he finds it “preposterous and insubstantial.”
You can feel a subconscious life seething beneath the narrative in Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things. This is a book of secrets, only some of which are eventually revealed on the page. Like Faber's debut novel, Under the Skin, Book is a genre-twisting story told in a spare, dispassionate style. In brief, it sounds like a generic science-fiction novel: A missionary named Peter travels to a planet called Oasis to bring the word of God to an inscrutable race of aliens.
Faber offers a clue in the acknowledgements to one of the book's big mysteries by expressing his "appreciation for the team of writers, pencilers, and inkers who worked at Marvel Comics during the 1960s and 1970s, giving me such enjoyment as a child and ever since." In an interview at the Sorrento Hotel's Fireside Room, Faber happily elaborates on his homage, identifying characters' names—"Stanko is Steranko"—and explaining that he wanted to write a book that produced the sense of wonder and possibility he felt as a comics reader…
