Book 35 Kindred & Under the Whispering Door

 

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler fulfilled the category “An #OwnVoices SFF (science fiction and fantasy) Book” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge. I also read Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune. Both books were wonderful, but when I think of #OwnVoices, I steer toward people of color rather than LGBTQ. So, I’ll use both, as I do.

Not to throw another time-travel book at you, but Kindred is a time-travel novel. Sorry. But it’s a great one. In this story, Dana is drawn into the past by her ancestor. She moves through time from 1976 to antebellum Maryland. Did I mention the woman is black, landing in the South, and her ancestor is the white slave owner who fathered her great-great (many greats) grandmother? Talk about conflict.

Rufus, the son of a slave owner, has the ability to pull Dana back through time when he’s in trouble. It begins when he almost drowns at age 4. She saves him but remains stuck in the early 1800s. She can only go back to her time when she’s in mortal danger. Once she returns, she never gets much time at home before Rufus calls her again. Time has passed for him, usually in years, but it’s only minutes for Dana. Each time, she must save him or risk her entire family’s existence.

The novel held many themes about race, socioeconomic status, even feminism. I could write a dissertation on the novel and not get to all of it. Needless to say, race and race relations were prominent in the book. Rufus, though young and friendly with Dana, learns more from his father’s attitude about how to treat slaves and free blacks. His entire relationship with Alice, the great-great-etc. grandmother is disturbing. He wants her when she is a free woman and can’t understand why he can’t have her. He takes her any way he can. It’s disgusting. Even as a free woman, she has no rights because of her color and sex. His “I want it, so it’s mine” mindset can still be seen today. How far have we come? Only inches.

I also had a hard time with Dana’s acceptance of her situation. She took the time-travel well. She was a writer and must have a great imagination, but it never seemed to confound her. The other thing—and I believe this was a point by Ms. Butler—was Dana’s consent for her position as a slave. She did it to survive, but she never really fought back. It was surreal to think a modern woman would submit. Her relationship with Rufus was complicated, at best. She cared for him, but also knew the monster that he truly was. Heavy stuff!

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune is a tale of love, loss, and LGBTQ. I had the book for the “Afterlife” and “Found Family” prompts and wasn’t sure where to put it. It’s the story of finding your life after you’ve died. In life, Wallace was not a nice person. He is driven to succeed in business and has few interpersonal skills. At his funeral, he is ferried to a purgatorial place, a tea shop. There he works and learns about life, death, and most of all, love. It’s a story of redemption, hard work, and learning to open your heart. It’s super sweet where you can route for the good guy even before he’s a “good” guy.

Once again, I’m giving you a double shot. I over-read for this year’s challenge. As it’s already September, I want to share all the lovely books I read.

I give Kindred by Octavia E. Butler Five Papers Declaring their Freedom.

I give Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune Four Cups of Tea.

 

 

Book 34 The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

 

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman fulfilled the category “A Book about Someone Leading a Double Life” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge.
I read a couple of books for this category, but Mrs. Pollifax worked the best. It’s mostly a cozy mystery (with elements of suspense), and people usually underestimate the amateur sleuths in those stories. In this novel, Mrs. Pollifax goes to Mexico City and helps solve a murder by pretending to be a tourist. In fact, she’s working as a spy for the government the whole time.

The story was written in 1966, at the start of the Cold War, which makes the book even more interesting. Mrs. Pollifax is an amazingly bold, vivacious character that is unassuming. Everybody believes she’s just a middle-aged housewife, but she thwarts spies, lives through all sorts of disasters, and is doing her middle-aged, awesome woman thing. That was one of the things I loved about the novel. It demonstrated how women of a certain age really have their stuff together. We all can totally get things done, like being a CIA agent in Mexico after raising our children.

I also read Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. I planned to use it for the “Knife on the Cover” prompt, but I realized it would fit this category, too. I didn’t want to highlight it as the main subject for the post. It’s a grisly murder book where the hero is a villain at the same time. But we all know that because most of us have watched the TV show.

Reading the novel got me thinking. It’s my second Dexter story. The show did a great job turning the first novel into an entire season of television. This book showed me something I’d missed only watching the show. I understood Dexter as a character much better reading than viewing. I heard Dexter’s internal monologue, his thoughts. The writing illustrated how hard he was working to pretend to be human in front of everybody else. That’s a critical aspect of the stories. Here’s this serial killer working for the police department as a blood spatter expert when he's the one killing the bad guys and taking care of the problems. Interestingly, he’s having social issues all over.

Anyway, I had quite the contrast of books for the prompt.

I give The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman Four Stars for its fun, interesting Miss Marple at a younger age.

I give Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay Four Stars for the author’s audacity to write about a serial killer being the hero.