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We have mice in our flat, unfortunately. I was just sitting innocently on the couch and IT TRIED TO NIBBLE ON MY TOES! I am not edible, mouse! Away with you! (We will be getting a cat soon. I hope!)
I finished Kindred by Octavia Butler today (read it in about 5 hours.) I highly reccomend it. It surprised me how realistic it was. I guess I was expecting it to be more SFish - I didn't even read the back cover first so I thought it might be happening in the future from the prologue. Also, the only thing by Butler I had come in contact with before was something a friend of mine read aloud once - a very poetic (I think) description of another world... I think it had something to do with webs.
Expectations aside, it was an amazing story, complex and layered yet easy to read. What struck me a lot, especially at the beginning, was how much the characters thought and talked about what might happen next. Often in SF, it seems like the characters don't have brains - they don't seem to even hypothesize about how things work (e.g. time travel) or if they do, they get it wrong. I liked how quickly Dana got things. For example, she realized early on that if Kevin came with her, he probably wouldn't be able to get back on his own. And they talked about it and made plans for what to do (which didn't work out, but they did try.) I did find it a little odd that she didn't try to work out exactly what the difference in the rate of time was between her present and the past, but maybe the time disortion varied.
But that's my SF mind going off on tangents there. That's not really what the book is about, it's about a black woman of 1976 stuck in the South during slavery. It's about how "easily people could be trained to accept slavery" - and how impossible it is to repress the desire for freedom. As Luke says, "like we need some stranger to make us think about freedom."
(Random thing that I never figured out: what was Rufus using up Dana's ink (in her pens) for? Did that get solved and I missed it?)
I realized after reading it that, other than Dana, I had been very focused on the white characters - especially Rufus and Kevin, and Tom Weylin to a lesser extent. I'm not sure whether that's my own bias in reading or the way that the story is told. I think that in some ways Dana has a blind spot for Alice. She even says that she probably wouldn't have liked her in other circumstances. They're very similar - and also, she sells out Alice in exchange for her own safety. Ensuring that her ancestry continues - that Hagar is born - and, I think to a lesser extent, her immediate physical safety, her treatment at Rufe's hands. Rufe says that they're "one woman"... I don't think Butler wants us to actually think that's what they are. I don't think that's her archetype - it's Rufe's. That's her point. For Dana, Alice is the shadow, the guilt she carries. I think that Alice becomes the scapegoat for Rufus' anger with Dana and she knows that. (I'm not saying that it was actually Dana's fault - Rufus is the one who decides to rape her over and over again and to put both of them in that situation. But I think Dana feels guilty because of the role she plays in their lives.)
I'd really to love to read or maybe even write some fanfiction from Alice's point of view, because I think how she feels about Dana must be so interesting. Her experiences with her when she was a child, and what happened with the patroller who attacked (and wanted to, maybe did, rape) her mother. I wonder if she grew up thinking of Dana as a sort of fairy godmother. She obviously looks up to her and their relationship goes through so many different things. I wonder if part of her thought maybe Dana would show up in the nick of time if she hung herself. How awful that Dana is only "called" by Rufus.
I think I was almost half-way through the book before I really processed that Dana was enslaved to Rufus by the time travel thing - not just metaphorically. Actually there's a massive shift from her saving Rufus because he's a little boy and she would do the same for anyone, to her saving him only because she is trying to protect either herself (and her lineage) or the plantation slaves. I think it speaks to how ethical she is that she doesn't kill him to free herself, only because he is going to cross too far over the line she has established. (I'm not saying that quite right in my not-totally-awake state, sorry.) But of course, she does kill for the other reason as well - so that she won't be drawn back there over and over as he becomes older and older and more of a slave-owner.
I finished Kindred by Octavia Butler today (read it in about 5 hours.) I highly reccomend it. It surprised me how realistic it was. I guess I was expecting it to be more SFish - I didn't even read the back cover first so I thought it might be happening in the future from the prologue. Also, the only thing by Butler I had come in contact with before was something a friend of mine read aloud once - a very poetic (I think) description of another world... I think it had something to do with webs.
Expectations aside, it was an amazing story, complex and layered yet easy to read. What struck me a lot, especially at the beginning, was how much the characters thought and talked about what might happen next. Often in SF, it seems like the characters don't have brains - they don't seem to even hypothesize about how things work (e.g. time travel) or if they do, they get it wrong. I liked how quickly Dana got things. For example, she realized early on that if Kevin came with her, he probably wouldn't be able to get back on his own. And they talked about it and made plans for what to do (which didn't work out, but they did try.) I did find it a little odd that she didn't try to work out exactly what the difference in the rate of time was between her present and the past, but maybe the time disortion varied.
But that's my SF mind going off on tangents there. That's not really what the book is about, it's about a black woman of 1976 stuck in the South during slavery. It's about how "easily people could be trained to accept slavery" - and how impossible it is to repress the desire for freedom. As Luke says, "like we need some stranger to make us think about freedom."
(Random thing that I never figured out: what was Rufus using up Dana's ink (in her pens) for? Did that get solved and I missed it?)
I realized after reading it that, other than Dana, I had been very focused on the white characters - especially Rufus and Kevin, and Tom Weylin to a lesser extent. I'm not sure whether that's my own bias in reading or the way that the story is told. I think that in some ways Dana has a blind spot for Alice. She even says that she probably wouldn't have liked her in other circumstances. They're very similar - and also, she sells out Alice in exchange for her own safety. Ensuring that her ancestry continues - that Hagar is born - and, I think to a lesser extent, her immediate physical safety, her treatment at Rufe's hands. Rufe says that they're "one woman"... I don't think Butler wants us to actually think that's what they are. I don't think that's her archetype - it's Rufe's. That's her point. For Dana, Alice is the shadow, the guilt she carries. I think that Alice becomes the scapegoat for Rufus' anger with Dana and she knows that. (I'm not saying that it was actually Dana's fault - Rufus is the one who decides to rape her over and over again and to put both of them in that situation. But I think Dana feels guilty because of the role she plays in their lives.)
I'd really to love to read or maybe even write some fanfiction from Alice's point of view, because I think how she feels about Dana must be so interesting. Her experiences with her when she was a child, and what happened with the patroller who attacked (and wanted to, maybe did, rape) her mother. I wonder if she grew up thinking of Dana as a sort of fairy godmother. She obviously looks up to her and their relationship goes through so many different things. I wonder if part of her thought maybe Dana would show up in the nick of time if she hung herself. How awful that Dana is only "called" by Rufus.
I think I was almost half-way through the book before I really processed that Dana was enslaved to Rufus by the time travel thing - not just metaphorically. Actually there's a massive shift from her saving Rufus because he's a little boy and she would do the same for anyone, to her saving him only because she is trying to protect either herself (and her lineage) or the plantation slaves. I think it speaks to how ethical she is that she doesn't kill him to free herself, only because he is going to cross too far over the line she has established. (I'm not saying that quite right in my not-totally-awake state, sorry.) But of course, she does kill for the other reason as well - so that she won't be drawn back there over and over as he becomes older and older and more of a slave-owner.
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I suggest glue traps. *shrugs* We live way out and there are fields on 3 sides of the house and forest in the back. Add in the pecan orchard and the pear trees and I know you can see where mice problems come into being. Glue traps are easy clean up and you can get them at your local dollar store usually. =) I never feel guilty about mousey deaths; they're vermin and dangerous to your health. #^_^#
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