The story involves a staple of science fiction--time travel--and Octavia Butler is famous as a science fiction writer--considered by many one of the greats alongside writers such as Ursula LeGuin, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. This particular novel isn't science fiction though, and you may be disappointed if you go in with that expectation. Dana, a modern black woman is married to a white man, Kevin, and they've just moved into their first home together in 1976 when for the first time she's transported into antebellum Maryland where she saves the life of Rufus Weylin--her slave-holding ancestor. There's no technical or scientific explanation for this displacement. I think that itself is deliberate, both to put the focus on the situation of slavery and to heighten the horror of the situation, to make us feel that above all slavery is about a lack of control, of a life disrupted. Slavery is what is examined in this novel--the implications or paradoxes of time travel is not.
I think if you're going to peg what genre this belongs in besides historical fiction, it's horror. The book begins "I lost an arm on my last trip home." That signals a lot about this story. The almost Kafkayesque fantastical and symbolic aspect of the book, and we know from the first line that Dana will survive but not without horrible loss. I think a lot of what I found so gripping in the book is that it invites you to imagine what it would be like as a modern person to be a slave. I've read reviews that fault Dana for being too much of a victim, too passive, and considers her selfish for not killing Rufus just because he's her own ancestor.
I think that's to misread the point of the book--that there were few opportunities or options and it's too easy to condemn everyone who didn't turn out to be a Sojourner Truth or Frederick Douglas. Rufus starts out an innocent--only five-years-old. Dana's bounced back and fourth into later period of his life, and we see the slave system corrupt him, despite him starting out with blacks, including Dana, who are important in his life and he cares about, even if that is twisted. Just as Dana herself is damaged in her relatively brief time there. We see two parallel movements, as Rufus is shaped into a slave master and Dana a slave. Dana spends more and more time in slavery as and because she becomes more adept surviving within it. In terms of arresting historical detail and engrossing me completely in the book, this one is a winner--a page turner.
It's short of amazing for me though, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it was signaling the end right from the prologue. Given the pattern set up early on and what just about every adult American knows of slavery, the plot's shape and the development of the characters was predictable. There are no surprises here, and though Butler's a good writer, she wasn't in Kindred a particularly arresting one, and though I found the story suspenseful, I never found it moving.
I've tried one other book by Butler--The Parable of the Sower. That book truly is science fiction. Unfortunately, I found it unbearably preachy, and I found it harder to buy into Parable's future than into Kindred's past. I'm glad I read Kindred, but I wouldn't read it again, and I won't be reading more of Butler after this.
