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Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)

Octavia E. Butler

Start date: May 1, 2025

Finish date: May 31, 2025

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Dec 15, 2020 Paul Perry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, us-author, society, female-author, read-in-2020, sf, literary, american, african-american, racism

Wow.

Well, I can't say I enjoyed that, but enjoyment isn't always the point. Like Schindler's List or The Road I'm glad I experienced it but doubt I'll ever do so again.

Butler, of whom I am a huge fan, paints a picture of the USA and of humanity that is painfully bleak, made all the more difficult that it is set in the mid 2020s. This is not a post-apocalypse novel; rather than the world being devastated by war or disease or natural disaster, society seems only to be falling apart due to human gr Wow.

Well, I can't say I enjoyed that, but enjoyment isn't always the point. Like Schindler's List or The Road I'm glad I experienced it but doubt I'll ever do so again.

Butler, of whom I am a huge fan, paints a picture of the USA and of humanity that is painfully bleak, made all the more difficult that it is set in the mid 2020s. This is not a post-apocalypse novel; rather than the world being devastated by war or disease or natural disaster, society seems only to be falling apart due to human greed and populist politicians taking advantage of people's fears. The land is ravaged by groups of displaced people who are at the mercy of predatory gangs and masses of people addicted a drug pyro that makes them set fires. The lucky people have turned their communities into fenced compounds, although these are constantly under threat of invasion ("the wealthy" are referred to, who can afford better defences and private security, but we never see these). Police are no more than a protection racket, and it is referenced that such things as employment rights - indeed, any rights - are a thing of the past. Indentured servitude or even slavery seem to have returned, along with "company towns" that underpay employees in scrip that can only be spent in the company shop.

All this we gather gradually through the course of the novel; the initial bleakness being the events that occur in front of our protagonist, Lauren. Violence, murder, theft and rape (lots of rape) happen with increased frequency as her central California home becomes more and more threatened. This is not described in any detail and the matter-of-factness makes it all the more horrifying. The narrator is direct, never speaking in euphemism; it is never "assault", always "rape".

Lauren is also a "sharer", a sensitive who experiences the physical sensations that she sees other feeling - which, in this environment, is mostly pain - and has for some years been writing the Book of Earthseed, part diary and part new religion, where God is an impersonal force of change that shapes life but can in turn be shaped by its adherents.

As well as being difficult to read due to the bleakness, I always have a problem with these books because I can't buy into this apocalyptic vision of humanity, reduced to roaming bands of killers, rapists and cannibals. While society can and does break down, we are a species that forms societies for our own protection. It is probably our defining feature. Cormac McCarthy gets us there by having an undefined apocalypse that seems to have sterilised the land, and Octavia Butler does it through the machinations of politicians and a devastatingly destructive narcotic. But I know that isn't the point; as she tells us in the title, this is a parable about these things; about corruption of the state, about racism, about a society tearing itself apart. Perhaps my issue at suspending disbelief is simply a refusal to accept this worldview for my own sanity, such as it is.

I will read the sequel, Parable of the Talents, but I will need to gird myself first with some happier reads. ...more

5 likes · Like · see review

Oct 26, 2023 Kelle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Eerie book to read which was written in the early 90’s about what life might be like in 2024. What might have been almost unbelievable then is certainly believable today, just a few months short of 2024.

2 likes · Like · see review