Reviews tagging 'Death'

A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia Butler by Lynell George

1 review

anna_hepworth's review against another edition

informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

This biography of Octavia Butler is amazing. I don't have the oomph to write a proper review, so from my reading notes:

Intro does a good job of putting both Butler and biographer into context, as well as a feel for the kind of archive Butler left, which is boggling in the fineness of the detail.

Love the way this flows - the voice of the biographer is subsumed into the voice they are giving Butler. There is ever that sense of reading both fact and fiction simultaneously, as must be the case when working from written records, even those as personal and complete as these appear to be.

But what I am getting the whole way through is a sense of being neuro atypical. The vagueness and failure to perform in primary school, the endless lists and rigorous lifestyle chosen, the hyper fixation.

This biographer can really write. Not sure how much of the text is Butler’s unedited work, but flows together so beautifully - I almost feel like I’m reading poetry

And there is a bit towards the end that made me cry - a quote from 1999 about what Butler might achieve with another 30 years. Butler is one of the few writers whose death was a terrible shock, a jarring unexpected change in the world that made me angry with the Fates. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Death and Racism