Kindred in Around the World in 80 Books

Feb 28, 2019 Linda Martin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, poverty, favorites, families, geo-california, historical-fiction, 2019, sci-fi, paranormal, magical-realism

Truly amazing fiction. I loved reading this book and will always consider it one of the best novels I've ever read. It is a time travel novel (which isn't so unique these days as it might have been in the 1970's when it was written) but.. with an incredible setting... a black woman, age 26, living in Altadena near Los Angeles, is transported back to antebellum Maryland repeatedly, where she's treated as a slave.

Kindred shines a light on the horrors of slavery. These days we think, how could tha ...more

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Mar 13, 2015 marianne rated it liked it

Shelves: bookclub

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. An African American woman, Dana, is transported back into time whenever Rufus, her slave-owning white ancestor, finds himself in a life or death situation and needs her help; such is the premise of the plot of this very original story.

The story was not without gaps, some characters lacked development (others were great, complex, dynamic), and the writing was somewhat inconsistent; the beginning felt like a college creative writing class assignment. Published in 1979, this was one of Butler's ea ...more

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Dec 03, 2023 Melanie Knight rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2023-reading-challenge

I chose this novel to fit a prompt in The 52 Book Club’s 2023 Reading Challenge (Prompt #48: A book by Octavia E. Butler). Previously, I’d come across the author’s name a few times as a science fiction author, but hadn’t read any of her books.

I was very pleasantly surprised. This is science fiction, in that it involves time travel, but felt more like historical fiction in the way that it described her repeated visits to a plantation in early 19th-century Maryland. The story is told in first-pers ...more

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Nov 12, 2022 Johanne rated it liked it

Shelves: 2022-books, black-authors

Somehow this book just felt a little lacklustre to me. I’m not sure if I can put my finger on exactly why. I feel like it’s more of psychological horror than SciFi but it seemed to be a step removed from its own horror. I mean, imagine being ripped back and forth in time with no control, always instigated by eminent mortal danger. And always to a time and place of slavery, where, as a black woman, white people can do anything they want to you and they do. Pure horror. Perhaps it was so horrifyin ...more

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