Movies and television shows that are based on books often miss the mark. Some say it’s because our imaginations are far better than what can be represented on the screen. Others feel it’s because the writers take too much liberty with the source material. The latter was the case with the television series based on Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred. However if we hadn’t watched the first season of the cancelled show, I wouldn’t have sought out the book.
I had had Butler recommended to me years ago and knew that she was an inspiration to the amazing N.K. Jemisin. For some reason, I hadn’t read her works. I wish I hadn’t waited so long.
Originally published in 1979, Kindred is a science fiction novel however, Butler uses the genre to describe the experience of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century. In the prologue, we meet Dana, a 26 year old African American woman who’s successful, happily married, and recently moved into a new home in 1976 Los Angeles. Experiencing a moment of disorientation, Dana finds herself near a river where she saves a young boy from drowning. Suddenly she’s confronted by a man who shoves a shotgun at her. She becomes disoriented again and back in LA.
Throughout the book, we travel with Dana to the slave era Maryland as she’s “called” many times to save the life of a slave owner’s son, Rufus. Through her travels, Dana learns the brutal realities of life in that period of US history. Dana’s story begins and ends in mystery.
Butler is a wonderful writer and storyteller. At no point in the book does Butler become heavy handed, she simply tells it as it was. The book is engaging and thought provoking. I look forward to reading more of her work.
You may be wondering what was wrong with the television series. I felt that they added too many side characters that muddled the main storyline. They added that Dana’s mother was also a time traveler who was freed by Dana taking her place. This didn’t happen in the book. Her mother had passed away years before. Another was making Rufus’ mother’s family an element of the story. They were mentioned in the book but didn’t play a role in the storyline. I speculate that if the series continued, the writers would have been tempted to solve the mystery for the viewers. A big mistake.
