Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

I'm not very much into time travel tales, but this one is terrifying, riveting and irresistible. Worth a read for the chills and the chance to reflect on racial issues.

Deceptively simple prose, a wide and complicated spanning of human emotions, and time travel that feels almost natural. I can't believe this book was written in 1979.

What a remarkable book! Even though it sometimes depicts terrible suffering, and raises serious questions about human morality, it never comes across as despairing. The story is so compelling, and Dana such a marvelous, fleshed-out character, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next.

At times I was cheering Dana on, impressed by her grit and courage, while other times I wanted to shake her and save her from her own decisions. I think Butler very deliberately crafted the narrative so the line between the two reactions will vary for different readers. This is reflective of the overarching questions: How much can a person put up with? When does understandable self-preservation cross into unforgivable collaboration? How does privilege skew our moral judgments?

But again, all of this weighty philosophy springs naturally from an amazing, thrilling, harrowing adventure tale. The book never bogs down but maintains tension beautifully, until coming to a fitting conclusion.

Butler's bibliography is going on my Must Read list - not only does she tell a fabulous story, but she transcends the time she was writing in, delivering a story that is fresh and relevant more than 35 years later.

This was great. For lack of any good comparisons, because this book is pretty genre-defying, her writing reminded me a bit of Philip K. Dick, in that the general ideas and plot execution are really interesting, and the social commentary is direct without being too heavy-handed; similarly to Dick, too, the dialogue is relatively stilted.

Still, it's a really interesting read.