Kindred -- Take 2

I owe thanks to K for picking out Kindred as our postal book club book. I had been meaning to read it for quite some time, and I sure am glad that I finally did.

It's a difficult book to read, in the way that all books which are about slavery are difficult, especially when they are intensely personal.  But it's also incredibly well done in that the characters, though there are "good" and "bad" people, are almost all complicated.  Very few of them are entirely good or entirely bad; just when someone is approaching despicable, there is a scene that evokes just enough empathy to give you hope for a turnaround.

It also made slavery -- which seems to most of us like a nearly-ancient historical circumstance -- seem suddenly not so far away.  I give huge credit to Octavia Butler for that.  So many books which talk about difficult and embarrassing historical circumstances suffer from the collective volume of their brethren; it can quickly become tiresome to read more than a few books about slavery, Nazi Germany, persecution of any kind.  This one provides a new and interesting perspective which keeps the topic fresh.