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Reading Wednesday
Sep. 8th, 2021 07:24 amCurrently reading: The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Still really into this, and almost finished it (if I'm not too exhausted, I'll be done tonight). Three things stand out for me, two positive and one negative.
Negative first: She doesn't lean in to Lauren's hyper-empathy as much as I would have expected. Butler is too skilled a writer for me to think it's not on purpose, but it's a bit weird. It's not my favourite concept, and I think the book could be just as good without it, unless it's relevant in the last 50 pages.
And now the positives: As I said last week, this is a remarkably prescient book. I think it would still be hailed as such even if it had come out this year. If it weren't for the complete absence of cellphones and characters missing their online communities, it could absolutely be a scathing post-apocalyptic novel written in 2021 about what's in store for us three years down the road. It's harrowing and bleak and feels very much real. She sets forth a lot of the elements that would later become standard in the genre. And I think a lot of it comes from writing a future that is the present day reality for large swathes of the planet.
It's also one of the rare books with a teenage protagonist that feels like an authentic teenage voice. Lauren is kinda pretentious and Earthseed feels like the kind of religion a kid would come up with. She's a smart, sensitive teenager, but she's still very much a teenager, and this absolutely feels like a kid's diary of the apocalypse. The details of her personality add a certain specificity and realism to the horrors she witnesses.
I probably don't have to tell you that triggers and trigger warnings abound with this one.
Negative first: She doesn't lean in to Lauren's hyper-empathy as much as I would have expected. Butler is too skilled a writer for me to think it's not on purpose, but it's a bit weird. It's not my favourite concept, and I think the book could be just as good without it, unless it's relevant in the last 50 pages.
And now the positives: As I said last week, this is a remarkably prescient book. I think it would still be hailed as such even if it had come out this year. If it weren't for the complete absence of cellphones and characters missing their online communities, it could absolutely be a scathing post-apocalyptic novel written in 2021 about what's in store for us three years down the road. It's harrowing and bleak and feels very much real. She sets forth a lot of the elements that would later become standard in the genre. And I think a lot of it comes from writing a future that is the present day reality for large swathes of the planet.
It's also one of the rare books with a teenage protagonist that feels like an authentic teenage voice. Lauren is kinda pretentious and Earthseed feels like the kind of religion a kid would come up with. She's a smart, sensitive teenager, but she's still very much a teenager, and this absolutely feels like a kid's diary of the apocalypse. The details of her personality add a certain specificity and realism to the horrors she witnesses.
I probably don't have to tell you that triggers and trigger warnings abound with this one.
