The Book of Strange New Things

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber is a 2014 science fiction book. I was enthralled through the entire book and then was disappointed by the ending.

from the back of the book:

Called to a mission of a lifetime, Peter travels light-years from his wife, Bea, to an astonishing new environment. He's to preach to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter's teachings. But when Bea's letters from home become increasingly desperate -natural disasters are rampant and governments are crumbling- her faith begins to falter. Peter, rattled and heartsick, is forced to choose: historic humanitarian work, or the love of his life.

Replete with emotional complexity and bravura storytelling, The Book of Strange New Things is a powerful and haunting meditation on faith, love, and devotion.

The New York Times concludes,

Defiantly unclassifiable, “The Book of Strange New Things” is, among other things, a rebuke to the credo of literary seriousness for which there is no higher art than a Norwegian man taking pains to describe his breakfast cereal. As well as the literature of authenticity, Faber reminds us, there is a literature of enchantment, which invites the reader to participate in the not-real in order to wake from a dream of reality to the ineffability, strangeness and brevity of life on Earth.

NPR calls it "a remarkable work of imagination and genius." io9 says, "this really is a great book about religious faith, and what it means to people, and how it can be both an enormous source of strength and insight, and at the same time a set of blinders". The Independent says, "The Book of Strange New Things offers no easy interpretations. It is at once rather blank and simple, Faber not being given to directing the reader in what he or she should think, and richly suggestive."