I really wanted to like this book. The characters were so vivid, the writing so fluid and honest, and the main character in particular so relatable.
Like her, all I really want is to be heard. My ideas make perfect sense to me, and I have devoted a lifetime to thinking them out, writing them down, and testing them in the brutal laboratory of life. I'm not even attached to the idea that they are True or Right. I would just love for someone to hear them without laughing or scoffing or backing away slowly, as though from a madman. This world is terrifying and cruel, and at times seems to be teetering on the brink of exactly to the sort of collapse Butler describes. In fact, her account of the fall of America seems entirely plausible. The only thing that keeps me going most days is the possibility that I understand something real, something to which others are blind, and that I may have not entirely wasted my time here. In so many ways, I am Lauren. I feel her pain, her drive, and her clarity. I would even be her if it were not for one thing:
Her ideas are sooooo stuuuuupid.
If there were any ring of truth in the ideas of Earthseed, which Butler presumably means to be taken in earnest, I would convert right now. I'd change my official religion from Bokononist right this moment. Where the book succeeds on every other level, however, it fails in this: to provide a philosophy any deeper than a flimsy NYT self help book. I wanted so badly to get on board, to form an Earthseed cult and start recruiting. At the very least, I wanted to enjoy this book. But I . . . seriously, I just can't.
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