Parable of the Sower is my first book by Octavia E. Butler, one of Speculative fiction’s pre-eminent black female science fiction author’s, and also a writer I have been dying to read. It is for that reason that I have chosen it as the first book reviewed here at Aniggaincyberspace.com. May our journey be epic.
The novel is set in a beautifully decadent and vividly dangerous not to far off American society, with a start date of 2031. Let me digress here to say I love any kind of dystopian fiction, especially the kill the government raze the society kind, because we can’t get anywhere without a little action, but that may be getting ahead.
The book begins by introducing us to Lauren Olamina, a young black teenager living with her family in a besieged and dying, walled in California neighborhood. Outside the community’s walls drug addled killers, pyromaniacs, and all sorts of broken people generally rob, rape, and kill anyone who crosses their turf. As we learn in the first few chapters of the book not only do food and water shortages make everyday life a terrifying struggle but death is a common occurrence and guns are a necessary precaution for anyone who would venture outside the walls of the community looking for work or food. To make matters worse Lauren is afflicted with an inherited disease called hyper-empathy which means she feels the pain of others.
These are the threads that Butler works with, the dangers of the world outside, the worry over the future sustainability of the community, the need felt by both the old and young for family and love , all tie in to the novel’s main theme which is the growth of the prophet Lauren Olamina as she struggles to give birth to what she calls her new religion. It is from this idea that the book derives it’s title, taken from the new testament of the Christian Bible.
Indeed as the daughter of the local religious leader in a community besieged by violence Lauren’s childhood can be quite enlightening though I the early chapters where Butler mixes high violence and deep thought somewhat familiar. I am also not sure how the novel’s religious depth may come across to less experienced readers. Though this is of course is not a shot at Butler’s writing skill merely the flare.
At a certain unnamed point in the novel the focal point suddenly shifts and Lauren comes to experience and interact with more of the world outside. To me this was the high point of the novel and Butler’s narrative. Parable is well crafted and tightly written, and well paced though I suppose much of it could be called bleak. Readers who persists will enjoy a world full of shootouts and bandits, decaying ransacked villages, untrustworthy corrupt cops, roving gangs, and a colorful jaunt through a anarchic California countryside. In this way the book’s narrative reminded me of a Grand Theft Auto game the same way reading Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash for the first time reminds one, perhaps intentionally, of Grand Theft Auto game. The colorful characters, the wounded people, the sense of motion make even this dangerous backdrop seem a world ripe for exploration.
Ultimately it is the human stories that give the book it’s weight. Those of Lauren and of the people who stand by her as they suffer loss of loved ones, and bitter struggles, sexual violence, hopelessness, and hunger. Often performing acts of heroism that give emotional resonance the to human ability to fight back in the novels chaotic and lawless world. Butler’s prose is not flowery, and the novel’s world is not pretty but the roving gangs and California countryside make this a book well worth reading.