Kindred by Octavia E Butler
Adult Fiction Review by M
Counted towards Classics Club challenge
I don’t read much science fiction but am definitely one who
likes the ideas more than the details or adventure that fill the plots (that
probably applies to any book from any genre that I read, if I’m being honest).
So, Kindred’s mix of science fiction and African American literature as a
premise was irresistible for me. I’d never read Butler before, but I was
definitely aware of her, most recently through Aarti’s Diversiverse blog tours
which explore speculative fiction by writers ‘of color’.
Kindred delighted, surprised, informed, moved and
disappointed me, all in one. In 1976, Dana, a black American New Yorker, finds herself
back in the southern heartland of nineteenth century slavery, a dangerous place
for any black person. The novel takes Dana back and forth over the course of
these years. While these travel episodes seem connected to Rufus, a slave owner’s
son, Dana finds that her ‘quest’ is a very long-sighted survival that will last
for generations.
For all its enormous subject matter (north American slavery
in the 1800s and time travel) – and particularly given the context of 1970s USA
when it was written and published – Kindred is quietly unassuming in its
exploration of love, mixed race, gender relationships and enslaved bondage.
Yes, there’s the time travel aspect to the novel but this is much more a
device, which presents both the writer/narrator, the characters and the reader
opportunities to grapple with these psycho-social themes.
What the time travel element also enables is the idea of the
‘one woman’ that Rufus creates in his mind for Dana and Alice. Also interesting, to me,
is how the characters of Kevin, Rufus and Tom Waylin contrast white men. I
would have liked to have seen further developments in Kevin’s story but that at
least shows that there is substance to the individual characters independent of
the novel’s story.
I also liked the way Butler highlights that the pain and suffering
during slavery were (and are) experienced by everyone in some form or another,
and across different times and space. Of course, she highlights too how there
are different levels to this experience and how some are more affecting,
unequal, unacceptable and abhorrent than others. But, again, she peruses
whether or not this too alters in perception across time and space. She
presents no easy answers or solutions to either racial identities or historical
guilt.
For shelving Kindred, I’d definitely put it in among
the Toni Morrisons and Alice Walkers. But, for a completely different yet parallel
reading experience, it would sit equally comfortably, for me, alongside Audrey
Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. Love and time travel provide the
similarities, but Kindred offers less of sweet romance and much more grounded depth.
I’d recommend them both for quite different yet similar reasons.
Classics club verdict: It definitely makes me want to go back and read Toni Morrison's Beloved again.
Some notes for my future lack of memory (small SPOILER ALERT):
SPOILERS BEGIN:
The characters: Alice is a black slave whom Rufus loves. Kevin
is Dana’s husband, Rufus is the boy she connects with, and Tom is his father.
Where Dana and Alice might be seen by Rufus to embody the one woman (who is
also black), the three white men might be analysed in a similar way too (Perhaps?
I have not explored this)?
SPOILERS END
Publication details: Headline, March 2014, London, paperback
(originally published 1979)
This copy: review copy from the publisher
