The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel by Michel Faber

Author:Michel Faber [Faber, Michel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780553418859
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-28T04:00:00+00:00

Peter’s second sojourn in the place USIC called Freaktown was as bewildering and exciting as the first. He got to know the Oasans better—that was to be expected—but he also saw changes in himself, changes he couldn’t articulate but that felt profound and important. Just as the atmosphere penetrated his clothes and seemed to pass through his skin, something unfamiliar was permeating his head, soaking into his mind. It wasn’t in the least sinister. It was as benign as benign could be.

Not all of it was enjoyable, though. Halfway into his stay, Peter went through a strange phase which, looking back on it afterward, he could only call the Crying Jag. It happened during one of the long, long nights and he woke up somewhere in the middle of it with tears in his eyes, not knowing what he had dreamt to make him weep. Then, for hours and hours, he continued to cry. Upsurges of sorrow just kept pumping through his bloodstream, as if administered at medically supervised intervals by a gadget inside his body. He cried about the weirdest things, things he had long forgotten, things he would not have imagined could rank very high in his roll-call of griefs.

He cried for the tadpoles he’d kept in a jar when he was a kid, the ones that might have grown into frogs if he’d left them safe in their pond instead of watching them turn to gray sludge. He cried for Cleo the cat, stiff on the kitchen floor, her matted chin stuck to dried gravy on the rim of her plate. He cried for lunch money he’d lost on the way to school; he cried for a stolen bicycle, recalling the exact feel of its rubbery handles in his palms. He cried for the bullied classmate who killed herself after her tormenters squirted ketchup in her hair; he cried for the swallow that flew against his bedroom window and fell lifeless to the concrete far below; he cried for the magazines that kept arriving for his father each month, shrinkwrapped, long after his father had left home; he cried for Mr. Ali’s corner newsagency and off-license that went out of business; he cried for the hapless anti-war marchers pushing on through the bucketing rain, their placards drooping, their children sullen.

He cried about the “Quilts for Peace” that his mother sewed for charity auctions. Even when her fellow Quakers took pity and put in a few bids, those quilts never fetched much because they were gaudy patchworks that clashed with every décor known to civilized man. He cried for the quilts that had gone unsold and he cried for the quilts that had found a home and he cried for the way his mother had explained, with such lonely enthusiasm, that all the colors symbolized national flags and the blue and white could be Israel or Argentina and the red polka dots were Japan and the green, yellow and red stripes with the stars in the middle could be Ethiopia, Senegal, Ghana or Cameroon depending on which way you were sleeping.

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