Book Review - Fledgling, Octavia Butler
First off the bat, I have to say the beginning of the book seemed to drag on and on for me. Not the immediate beginning - that was fresh, it grabbed me, and the dread that I felt knowing that she’d killed and eaten someone she knew and extrapolating that out to how she was going to feel when she understood what she had done really got to me. But then, the constant questions that I, as the reader, had were just reflected, at times word for word, on the page. And to me, these questions with no real answers just started to grate on my nerves. When were we going to get an inkling of an answer? Some movement in the story to unfolding this world? I’m normally someone who loves mystery and unanswered questions - but here, I felt that I wasn’t being given anything other than the questions that I had on my own. I wasn’t being given anything with which to build up a personal theory, nothing that I could use to fill in the blanks and create and reject theories about what was happening and what made this world tick.
BUT, I stayed with it and was rewarded with a really interesting story that unfolded to challenge me and make me uncomfortable. And believe me, I was seriously challenged with the sex issue. I knew that she was internally older, that in the beginning she was fully aware and consenting to the sex, but it still really bothered me. Her body is young looking and I couldn’t wrap my head around the desire on the part of Wright. Was he really attracted to her outside of how good she made him feel when she bit him? From almost the moment he slowed down next to her in the car, he made me uneasy - why had he stopped for this child? I see Butler using this imagery on purpose because it plays on our ideas of typical dangerous situations, which is brilliant on her part. What were his real motivations? Did he see someone vulnerable and was his move to help her stemming from a desire to protect or to take advantage? From there on, the physical intimacy between them induced a real squick factor in me. I wasn’t as bothered with her intimacy with Theodora - perhaps because it wasn’t as physically expressed. But Wright was a real challenge.
I was drawn in by the issue of community brought up by the book - community and memory. Is Shori a part of a the Ina community? She does not remember them and those who closely knew her do not exist any more. She looks other and she behaves other now - because she doesn’t remember their ways. Is she still a part of their community? Does the fact of her vampirism override these other factors? Because, what is a community if it is not shared experience and ideas? Added to that the racism angle and the fact that a large part of the community did not want her - is she not Ina because she is not accepted? These factors taken with her genetic modification, and I could see where it might have been easy for Shori to question whether she was a part of them, and from there to have given in to the will of the part of the community that did not want her there. The fact that she did not is testament to her strong personality and innate sense of self as well as right and wrong.
This is my first Butler book. I knew a bit of the themes that Butler tends to use, so I went into this book with a little trepidation tempering my excitement, because I didn’t want to read a heavy handed handling of race. She is one of those writers that I want to love, so I am always considering picking up a book of hers, or telling myself that I really should read her. Reading her take on the vampire myth, it didn’t feel like she was trying hard to be different. She seemed to honestly write it from her point of view - a strong one, that pushes issues of race and other things that have the potential to make the reader uncomfortable. There was nothing “forced” about this novel. I did feel, at the end, that this was meant to be the start of a series of books. And I was sad when I researched and discovered this was the last book she wrote before she died. I was equally sad to read that she hadn’t taken this seriously when writing it. I believe I would have put any further books in this series at the top of my list to read.
BUT, I stayed with it and was rewarded with a really interesting story that unfolded to challenge me and make me uncomfortable. And believe me, I was seriously challenged with the sex issue. I knew that she was internally older, that in the beginning she was fully aware and consenting to the sex, but it still really bothered me. Her body is young looking and I couldn’t wrap my head around the desire on the part of Wright. Was he really attracted to her outside of how good she made him feel when she bit him? From almost the moment he slowed down next to her in the car, he made me uneasy - why had he stopped for this child? I see Butler using this imagery on purpose because it plays on our ideas of typical dangerous situations, which is brilliant on her part. What were his real motivations? Did he see someone vulnerable and was his move to help her stemming from a desire to protect or to take advantage? From there on, the physical intimacy between them induced a real squick factor in me. I wasn’t as bothered with her intimacy with Theodora - perhaps because it wasn’t as physically expressed. But Wright was a real challenge.
I was drawn in by the issue of community brought up by the book - community and memory. Is Shori a part of a the Ina community? She does not remember them and those who closely knew her do not exist any more. She looks other and she behaves other now - because she doesn’t remember their ways. Is she still a part of their community? Does the fact of her vampirism override these other factors? Because, what is a community if it is not shared experience and ideas? Added to that the racism angle and the fact that a large part of the community did not want her - is she not Ina because she is not accepted? These factors taken with her genetic modification, and I could see where it might have been easy for Shori to question whether she was a part of them, and from there to have given in to the will of the part of the community that did not want her there. The fact that she did not is testament to her strong personality and innate sense of self as well as right and wrong.
This is my first Butler book. I knew a bit of the themes that Butler tends to use, so I went into this book with a little trepidation tempering my excitement, because I didn’t want to read a heavy handed handling of race. She is one of those writers that I want to love, so I am always considering picking up a book of hers, or telling myself that I really should read her. Reading her take on the vampire myth, it didn’t feel like she was trying hard to be different. She seemed to honestly write it from her point of view - a strong one, that pushes issues of race and other things that have the potential to make the reader uncomfortable. There was nothing “forced” about this novel. I did feel, at the end, that this was meant to be the start of a series of books. And I was sad when I researched and discovered this was the last book she wrote before she died. I was equally sad to read that she hadn’t taken this seriously when writing it. I believe I would have put any further books in this series at the top of my list to read.