Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

While familiar institutions like police and fire departments and federal and state governments still exist, they are ineffectual, and violence and vigilante justice have become the law of the land in most places. Butler first sets the scene, in a grim near-future that’s all too easy to imagine- America’s (and perhaps the world’s-that is left purposely vague) economy and government have become moribund, leaving thousands unemployed, homeless and desperate. If any of it seems clichéd, bear in mind it was first published in 1993, before dystopia became trendy and the genre became so glutted.

On its face, there’s nothing that extraordinary about the plot-it’s a classic dystopian/post-apocalyptic future story, in which a band of survivors travels a ruined country, fending off bandits and natural disasters, searching for a safe haven in which to build a secure new home.

It’s clear that she has been pigeonholed into only reading audiobooks with black protagonists, and a small number of those, which I think is a gross under-appreciation of her talents. Hungry for more of her work, I looked her up. I hung on every sentence, every word, and was happy to be carried along at the story’s natural pace. Her voice is raw silk, and her pacing and inflections are perfection, adding layers of meaning to a single word of dialog. A few reviewers have complained that she’s too slow, but poetry is not improved by speeding it up, and Thigpen’s reading is just that-pure poetry. While hers is plainly the voice of a mature woman and not a teenager, she perfectly channels Lauren’s “old soul” persona.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler