Books: Fledgling

 

Sometimes it's more interesting to read a flawed book with weird ideas than a good one that puts you to sleep. That's what I thought about Fledgling, Octavia Butler's final novel and our book club's latest selection. It's about a little black girl who discovers she is a 53-year old genetically modified vampire...and the people who are out to kill her.

Fledgling is, truth be told, not very good. Butler herself did not like how it came out, but she was suffering from terrible writer's block when she wrote it and hadn't written a novel in years, so she accepted the story that came out. In many ways, Butler's struggles are similar to those of the book's protagonist, who suffers from amnesia and must re-learn the ways of her kind.  Fledgling is oddly paced and ends abruptly - Butler regrettably passed away months after it was published.