I almost want to write an essay about this book. I'm delighted with the sense that everything is so very intentional. The Book of Strange New Things presents a series of meditations on faith (and a lack thereof), the frailties of the body, the necessity of emotion/attachment, and the psychological workings of a long-distance marital relationship. 
 Peter, a Christian minister with a dissolute past, accepts an offer from an enigmatic corporation to evangelize to the natives of a newly colonized planet, Oasis. He must leave behind his beloved wife, Beatrice. The calm, petite natives are eager to accept the faith of the Bible - or, as they call it, The Book of Strange New Things - but as he rejoices in reaching these new followers of Christ, his wife back on Earth is faced with an increasingly miserable and dramatic series of world events, personal tribulations, and natural disasters. 
 A couple notes: 
 - It's a very... unhurried book, taking lots of pauses to take in new sensations/textures, and focus on the mundane humanity of each new person. I might have called it "slow" pacing, but I think it really works here. 
 - The sentence of each chapter is its title, granting the narrative a sense of coming full circle, pre-ordainedness 
 - This book was shaped by the death of Faber's wife of 26 years, Eva. He plans for this book to be his last, possibly as a sort of eulogy. 
 - NYT review 
 I couldn't help but pay close attention to the character names: 
 - Peter ("upon this rock I will build this church" - Matthew 16:18) 
 - Beatrice (the Dantean muse to which he writes, who initiated the end of Peter's dissolute life and steers him onto the "path of righteousness", so to speak). 
 Then there's the noticeable Heart of Darkness theme: 
 - Expedition to new lands is funded by a mysterious private company 
 - Kurtzberg, Peter's predecessor in evangelizing the natives. Like HOD's Kurtz, he is unexplainably missing from present action; everything we know about him is secondhand. As HOD's Marlow muses, Kurtz means "short" in German - and Peter's description of Kurtzberg emphasizes that he's a short man. 
 - (view spoiler)[Just as HOD's Marlow is surrounded by fog, then attacked by natives, then meets a half-crazed Russian trader: Peter is surrounded by fog, then attacked by native (animals), then meets a half-crazed Tartaglione (linguist who disappeared along with Kurtzberg) (hide spoiler)] 
 - But then, Faber turns Heart of Darkness on its head: (view spoiler)[Instead of finding Kurtz(berg), he finds Kurtz(berg)'s grave, which (with the wedding rings) is made a testament to the endurance of marriage even past death. (hide spoiler)]