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Jun. 5th, 2009 09:51 amBut damn, Octavia Butler's Clay's Ark is dark. I mean, I have read a lot of her stuff and I am generally pretty good at coping with Butlerian bleakness! And I am really glad I read it, because it was amazing and fascinating. But wow.
It's harder, because I think this book combines exceptional hopelessness with some of her most sympathetic characters. The 'past' storyline of the novel follows Eli, a man who has been infected with an alien organism that alters his body, strengthens all his physical drives, and forces on him an uncontrollable compulsion to pass the disease along as much as he can through infection and procreation. Because of the physical changes, he essentially can't die, and he has to infect others or he will go insane. Within these compulsions, he has to try and hold onto his humanity as best he can. In the 'present' storyline, which takes place simultaneously, there is already a small community of the infected, doing their very best to hold themselves in check, only infect a limited number of people and keep the community completely isolated so as not to create a pandemic. Blake and his two sixteen-year-old daughters - one of whom has leukemia - were unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and are therefore about to join that limited number of people.
What Butler does amazingly well, again, is unrelentingly show a situation where a return to what we would consider normal humanity is impossible. The only choice is adaptation to what would have been unthinkable previously. This is always a question that I think is really, really fascinating, and also hits a particular terror kink of mine - when people are slowly losing their humanity, and are aware that they are losing their humanity but unable to stop it, and augh! It's the awareness of it that gets me. It takes a lot for a book to really scare me. Stephen King doesn't manage it most of the time. This did.
(ETA: I should add, however, that once again the LULZ of Twilight saved the day and staved off at least some of the grimness, because guys, the Cullens are totally clayarks! The strength, the speed, the dramatic leaps off high buildings, the irresistible compulsions, the magic babies . . . the clayarks even have the sparkle! Well, okay, profuse unnatural sweating, but it probably creates the same effect.)
I finished the book last night before going to sleep; I woke up this morning, looked out at the gray rainy sky, and thought, "Gosh, today I really feel like getting out of bed and going about life is essentially a losing proposition. I wonder why that is!
OH YEAH."
I think - I think next I will be reading something cheery. Just possibly.
In the meantime, though, tell me I'm not alone! What was the last book that really scared you?
It's harder, because I think this book combines exceptional hopelessness with some of her most sympathetic characters. The 'past' storyline of the novel follows Eli, a man who has been infected with an alien organism that alters his body, strengthens all his physical drives, and forces on him an uncontrollable compulsion to pass the disease along as much as he can through infection and procreation. Because of the physical changes, he essentially can't die, and he has to infect others or he will go insane. Within these compulsions, he has to try and hold onto his humanity as best he can. In the 'present' storyline, which takes place simultaneously, there is already a small community of the infected, doing their very best to hold themselves in check, only infect a limited number of people and keep the community completely isolated so as not to create a pandemic. Blake and his two sixteen-year-old daughters - one of whom has leukemia - were unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and are therefore about to join that limited number of people.
What Butler does amazingly well, again, is unrelentingly show a situation where a return to what we would consider normal humanity is impossible. The only choice is adaptation to what would have been unthinkable previously. This is always a question that I think is really, really fascinating, and also hits a particular terror kink of mine - when people are slowly losing their humanity, and are aware that they are losing their humanity but unable to stop it, and augh! It's the awareness of it that gets me. It takes a lot for a book to really scare me. Stephen King doesn't manage it most of the time. This did.
(ETA: I should add, however, that once again the LULZ of Twilight saved the day and staved off at least some of the grimness, because guys, the Cullens are totally clayarks! The strength, the speed, the dramatic leaps off high buildings, the irresistible compulsions, the magic babies . . . the clayarks even have the sparkle! Well, okay, profuse unnatural sweating, but it probably creates the same effect.)
I finished the book last night before going to sleep; I woke up this morning, looked out at the gray rainy sky, and thought, "Gosh, today I really feel like getting out of bed and going about life is essentially a losing proposition. I wonder why that is!
OH YEAH."
I think - I think next I will be reading something cheery. Just possibly.
In the meantime, though, tell me I'm not alone! What was the last book that really scared you?
