Kindred by Octavia E. ButlerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
We are the latest in a long line of strangers.
Most of us are acquainted with our parents. Many of us have met at least a subset of our grandparents. But our firsthand knowledge plummets with every generation beyond that. Some of those people in the distance may have left us anecdotes or documents or china collections, but most of them only left us with genes. How many voyagers and conquerors, wearers of shackles and cloth stars, came together to bring about each of us? Could we ever know?
Do we want to know?
That's a question that Dana, the young black woman at the heart of Kindred, doesn't have the option of saying no to. Through involuntary journeys across a century that mirror her ancestors' involuntary journeys across an ocean, she is sent from her 1976 California home to antebellum Maryland. There, she realizes that she has a single task: save Rufus Weylin. Rufus is the son of a wealthy slave owner. He's also "destined" to have a child with one of the slaves, a child that would grow up to become Dana's ancestor. As Dana is jerked back and forth through time, a pattern emerges: she is sent to Rufus's time to save him when his life is in danger, and is returned to 1976 when her own life is threatened. She walks a tightrope, trying to keep Rufus alive long enough for him to father a child, without getting herself killed, or getting stuck in the 19th century.
In the first few pages of the book, Butler's intentions are overt: this is not a book about uncovering the mechanisms of time travel, it's a book about the culture clash between times and places. Accordingly, Dana doesn't experience much bafflement about what's going on, because it's not a bafflement that Butler has any intention of allaying. Instead, Dana immediately latches on to the task that she's been given. That, I thought, was a somewhat unrealistic piece of behavior that served the purpose of getting the main plot going quickly.
But once that plot got going, it wouldn't stop. When reading this book at bedtime, I would tell myself that I'd just keep reading until Dana was in a slightly less dangerous position. Each night I'd find myself awake at a more ungodly hour. Life-threatening situations are key to how the story works. They become increasingly menacing with every repetition, and are arranged in a clever cycle of water and fire that I only noticed days after I had finished the book.
I often found myself trying to find little quotes to post here. Surprisingly, it was hard to do; the writing doesn't stand out because of glowing one-liners, but because of the light that bounces off one character to the next, illuminating as much as it covers in shadow. It's not a lyrical style of writing, but a spare and efficient one that I ultimately came to be grateful for. One doesn't necessarily wish to wax poetic while setting a broken bone.
As I hurried up the steps, I thought of Rufus and his father, of Rufus becoming his father. It would happen some day, in at least one way.
In addition to simply keeping Rufus alive through his numerous accidents and fights, Dana also wants to instill in Rufus a much-needed sense of compassion and justice; this often puts Dana in a position of opposition to Rufus's rigid and brutal father. They both leave their mark on him, although perhaps not the type of mark that either intended; he develops the devious nature endemic to the offspring of strict parents, combined with just enough open-mindedness to keep a twinge of Dana's hopes alive.
Dana's position as a time traveler has many fascinating aspects, but one that I found especially striking was the way people in the past regard her as a supernatural healer - due to possession of aspirin and some basic medical knowledge from the 20th century. Rufus's father has this to say about her: "You're something different. You come out of nowhere and go back into nowhere. But you can feel pain - and you can die. Remember that and do your job. Take care of your master." It immediately reminded me of this quote from The Green Mile: (view spoiler)
Finally, the relationship between Dana and her husband Kevin, who is white, undergoes a transformation, especially after Kevin is taken along on one of her trips. Kevin at first seems like a lazy, wishy-washy character, but eventually earned my respect through the loyalty that he demonstrates - although it's apparent that truly understanding Dana's experiences will be something that he'll have to work at over the course of his life.
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