Kindred

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 5/5 Book Stars

I'd go 4.5 but rounded up because it was better than 4. The story was so well done. The author was no where in the book - only Dana telling her own tale. I look forward to reading this again and telling everyone else that they should read it if they haven't.

Aside from how the time traveling mechanism wasn't properly explained in the book (although I read it more as speculative fiction/magical realism rather than sci-fi, which is its usual classification) and the prose being humble, it is one of my favourite reads of this year !!

Loved this book. I read Parable of the Sower with my book club this last year and really enjoyed it, so I decided to check out some more of Butler's work. Kindred is excellent on many levels. First off, it's a fascinating idea. The main character, Dana, keeps getting pulled back through time and space every time this one person, Rufus Weylin, is in serious trouble. The catch? Aside from unexpected time travel? Dana's black, Rufus is white, and it's 1815. Yikes. This book is also interesting because it brings up a whole variety of issues concerning slavery and race relations that wouldn't be as possible with a different plotline. Because Dana's from 1976 and also black, she is put in unique situations and has unique perspectives on what's going on around her. There's also lots of uncomfortable realities that are discussed and put out there to think about. This book had a lot of depth and nuance and I really enjoyed it.

This was the most thought-provoking book I've read in quite a while. I'm not particularly drawn to sci-fi books, so I was glad that the mechanics of Dana's time travel didn't get much time in this book. But the implications of her choices and actions were complicated and profound, and I'll be thinking about them for some time. I read it with my wife and son, and we've already had several really good conversations about both the content and the form of the book. (By the way, the exposition early in the book was pretty rough to read through. But she gets you through it quickly, and from then on the narrative is solid.) Well worth the read, and definitely recommended.