Books could be awesome mysteries to her, or they could be dangerous time-wasting nonsense.
Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
Genre: Historical Science-Fiction
About: It's the 1970s and Dana has moved into a new apartment with her husband. They're both writers unpacking their most precious possessions: books, when Dana starts to feel dizzy. It's a feeling she'll become familiar with and soon dread, the feeling of moving through time and space. Impossibly, she travels back to the 1800s. To the south. On a plantation. For anyone this could be a dangerous time, but for a black woman, Dana will have to learn and adapt fast.
The Good
As I'd heard so many great things about this book (and this author) I went into the story expecting flowery, very literary prose and while I don't want to take away from the skill of the writing, this book isn't what I was expecting at all. It's not beautifully written, it's humanly written. The characters and the relationships feel honest and real. Dana and Kevin have a realistic relationship which develops in interesting ways and I especially liked the unconscious comparisons made between him and Rufus. And Rufus is many shades of complicated. Even background characters have storylines that, while you don't follow them exactly, you feel they live beyond the pages. I really liked getting to know and understand the characters through Dana's eyes. The story is captivating, but the characters are so fully realised and changed through their experiences that I was fascinated by the psychology of the novel the most.
The Bad
It's difficult to read. For obvious reasons. Stories that centre around slavery and the extreme levels of violence and inhumanity done through slavery are always difficult reads. This novel doesn't make you experience deep trauma the same way others I've read have done (such as The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead), but brutal things happen. It's a short book but it's not a casual read, or one with a particularly happy ending.
The Somewhat Iffy
The time-travel aspect makes this sci-fi, but why and how Dana time-travels is never really explored all that much. We get to understand some of the why it happens, but not how and the how is usually a bigger focus in sci-fi's. Also this might just be me, but I found the way characters were introduced confusing: it took me longer than usual to remember who was who.
Overall
A very intelligent and depressingly relevant novel to read. What it says about humanity is not kind but if feels like the kind of novel that should be taught in schools. There are a lot of novels out there about slavery, this one, for me, goes deep into the psychology of how bigotry is allowed to flourish, generation after generation.
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