The Book of Strange New Things - Michel Faber

Peter Leigh is a man with a mission - literally! For this mild-mannered Christian minister to be selected to cross the galaxy to preach to and live among an alien race, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. But Peter leaves behind his beloved wife, Beatrice, and while he's out living the dream, Bea is trapped in a nightmare. How can a marriage survive such a distance?

In a literary culture saturated with dystopian futures, Oasis is aptly named as a seeming Utopia. It takes Peter a while to adjust to its days that are three times as long as an earth day, the peculiar regularity of the rains, and the crops and creatures that grow on the planet. The people themselves are difficult for him to connect with, at first; the way they look is hard to picture, the way they speak impossible to translate onto the page, and some of their words and consonants are pictured in symbols the reader has no frame of reference for. I was reminded of last year's film Arrival, where the linguist has to try to communicate with an alien race without any way of translating their language.

But that doesn't really matter. The Oasans are reserved, but kind-hearted, open and eager to hear Peter's message, and the work he puts in to translating the Bible into language they can understand and words they can pronounce is truly a labour of love. They open their hearts and homes to Peter; building a church together and working at the harvest. Probably this is the easiest missionary work ever. It all seems too good to be true. For the pages and chapters where Peter is alone among the Oasans, there seemed to be no conflict at all. And as someone who has studied the craft of writing, this made me uneasy. You just can't have a story without conflict. When, and how, was it going to go wrong?

That question is answered when Peter gets back to the base and reads his messages from Bea. All is not well on Earth. Every message from home brings news of some great catastrophe, whether a natural disaster, economical collapse or political chaos. And it is this dissonance that is the emotional heart of the novel. Like Peter, at first, you can compartmentalise what is happening on Earth, and on Oasis. The events are shocking, but you only hear about them from Bea, and the story you see first-hand is Peter's. And then Peter goes back to the Oasans, and you can relax a while and just enjoy the headway he is making with getting to know these people. That's what feels real.

But you just can't put your spouse to one side like packing a toy away in a cupboard until the next time you want them. They have their own lives, and a relationship must become strained if both parties are living in different realities. Tensions grow between them, as back at home Bea is overwhelmed by personal tragedy, professional struggles, social unrest and religious doubt, all things that Peter can't be whole-heartedly part of. It is devastating to read their messages (conveyed by a primitive email system called The Shoot) as they try to reach out for each other.

The Book of Strange New Things is powerful because of its authenticity. I don't know if Faber's writing was informed by any personal religious faith but Peter and Bea felt real, presented with compassion and with no impression of being seen from the outside. Both have overcome painful pasts to become a strong, supportive team at the heart of their community. Their love for each other quite literally spans the universe. And yet a love story does not end with the "happily ever after." The best relationships have their downs as well as their ups, and require a lot of work. Love is a choice, not just a feeling, and a choice that a couple has to make day after day after day. The Book of Strange New Things ends in one way just as you might hope, and yet there is a bittersweetness to the ending because it is not neat, it is not easy, and it is not over yet. But such is life. Faber has taken a gentle, quite simple tale and made of it an extraordinary examination of humanity, of what is worth living for, of faith, hope and love.

Shine, Shine, Shine - Lydia Netzer

 This is the story of an astronaut who is lost in space, and the wife he left behind.

It took me a while to decide whether or not I was going to like Shine, Shine, Shine. Though quite easy to read, written in a simple, rather Alexander McCall Smith-esque prose, the narration feels quite detached: telling, not showing, although in a deliberate, dreamy way. I wouldn't class this as a science fiction novel so much as a love story set in the very near future. It is realistic but occasionally surreal - both characters experience visions that could be prophetic or could be hallucinations, literal pictures of metaphors explaining their world.

It is specified early on that Maxon and Sunny's son is autistic, and it is clear that he shares traits with his father, who is a brilliant scientist but whose mind needs a formula for every human interaction. A lot of the story takes place in flashback, and at first I found it very hard to relate to the characters. Maxon is a being of logic rather than emotion, though he is curious and eager to learn. (I heard Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation's voice in my head for him.) His conversation is stilted, his humour falls flat, and I wondered at first why he had ever married Sunny. Could it really be love? Their interactions seemed so awkward and uncomfortable. The dialogue with Sunny about why he thinks it is time for them to have a baby made me feel quite uncomfortable. But Shine, Shine, Shine is a novel of gradual revelation; as it fleshes out their history and characters, I came to realise that these two unusual people were made for each other, that their love is touching and all-encompassing, even if not easily expressed, and they are really a beautiful couple.

To all appearances, Sunny is a fairly ordinary suburban housewife, expecting their second child when Maxon blasts off into space. Then something happens, and she makes the decision: no more pretending. The layers are stripped away to reveal a quite extraordinary person. Every aspect of her identity is called upon at once: as daughter, mother and wife - her mother is dying, she is expecting her second child, and her husband is in space - but what does it really mean to be Sunny Mann? How does she reconcile how she appears to the world with who she is inside?

Shine, Shine, Shine has a somewhat open ending, not giving you definite answers on what happens next. The present situation is not what this novel is really about, so much as the people involved, what made them and brought them to this point. Instead of answers, we are shown one of Sunny's visions, which, like Sydney Carton's at the end of A Tale of Two Cities, may or may not be taken as truth, but which end the novel on a note of hope. I recommend Shine, Shine, Shine to fans of The Time-Traveller's Wife: even if you find it a bit difficult to get into at first, it's worth sticking with it to the end.

Favourite Quotes:

"What, do you want to put pinholes in me and screw a bulb into my brain?" she said...
"I don't think I would need pinholes," said Maxon... "I think you would just shine."

How do we love each other? We love each other like naked children in a strange jungle, when every stump turns into and ogress, each orchid into a lump of maggots. We didn't say, 'I love you,' just as we didn't, after a day of wandering, lost in the trees, turn to each other and say, 'We are the only naked children in this jungle.' Everyone else was just a jaguar or a clump of dirt.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson

Major Ernest Pettigrew is an old-fashioned gentleman living in a quiet Sussex village. On the day of his brother's death, Mrs Ali from the mini-supermarket turns up for the newspaper money, and the two begin a warm friendship. Major Pettigrew is retired from the army, a bit of a "grumpy old man" with a biting wit, but a heart of gold. Mrs Jasmina Ali is a widow of Pakistani descent, fifty eight years old and resisting her family's attempts to retire her off and pass the running of the shop onto her nephew. They share a love of literature, and meet up to discuss books and drink tea, but as their friendship turns to love, Major Pettigrew and Mrs Ali have to contend with the judgements of their neighbours and families.

The village Major Pettigrew calls home, Edgecombe St Mary, is the sort of old-fashioned English community where everyone knows everyone else. A circle of gossipy ladies are the unofficial organisers of the village, as they run the social events and volunteer people to make themselves useful. Time and time again, Major Pettigrew finds himself in places and doing things he had never planned or wanted to do. Daisy the Vicar's wife and her gaggle of friends could be related to the knitting circles found in the later Anne books.

These awful women, as well as some of Major Pettigrew's relatives, can make for somewhat cringeworthy reading, with their snobbery and (perhaps) well-intentioned ignorance. Daisy et al make a career out of walking all over their neighbours and causing offense, spreading an epidemic of Foot-In-Mouth disease. While the main characters are realistic, three-dimensional people, the antagonists can verge on caricatures; surely no one can be that backward and insensitive all the time? Major Pettigrew observes the thoughtless comments towards Mrs Ali and her family, who seem to forgive and shrug it off, but careless-but-well-meant words mount up reveal a deeper prejudice, culminating in a disastrous dinner-dance.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is, despite the nastiness in some people's hearts, generally a "nice" book, written in a style reminiscent of Alexander McCall Smith, but with a caustic edge. It is a beautiful love story between an older man and woman, witty but sensitive, old-fashioned but still very relevant in its treatment of English society's attitudes to age, class and race.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is the last selection from the Richard and Judy Book Club for Spring 2011.

If you liked Major Pettigrew you may enjoy:

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency or Sunday Philosophy Club - Alexander McCall Smith

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows