Octavia Butler does not respect boundaries. Well, at least not the boundaries between fiction genres. Fledgling , the last book she published before her death in 2006, moves through suspense plot memes faster than Kim Kardashian posts selfies on Instagram. The result is a kind of turbocharged storytelling, in a book both alluring and jarring, fast-paced yet subverting its own momentum by defying reader expectations at every turn.
The book begins: "I awoke to darkness." We soon get to know the narrator, but the she hardly knows herself. She has no memories, no name, doesn’t even know what she looks like until she sees herself in a mirror. She has regained consciousness in a cave, and is recovering from serious injuries. "But how had I come to be in it?" she asks herself. "Where had I come from? How had I been hurt and left alone, starving? "
This is a classic plot device of suspense tales and thrillers, familiar to us from The Bourne Identity , The Raw Shark Texts , Dhalgren , Missing Person and other comparable stories. But in most instances, this quest to discover the protagonist’s identity serves as the springboard for the book’s drama. Not so with Butler. Within a few pages, the mystery of Shori's identity—for that is her name, Shori—has been solved, and Butler has shifted gears.
Readers now find themselves in a tried-and-true vampire story. Shori replenishes her strength by feasting on the blood of victims—except it isn’t clear that they are really victims. Butler presents the bloodsucking relationship in rapturous sexual terms, and the recipients of the vampire’s advances squeal in orgasmic delight as their red cells, white cells, platelets and plasma are slurped out of their open wounds. We are again in familiar territory— imagine a cross between Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey —but very different from the amnesia plot that opened the book.
Yet before we are one-third of the way through the novel, Butler begins shifting the tone from fantasy/horror to science fiction. Shori, we learn, is not just a normal vampire (is that an oxymoron?), but a genetically modified one, whose dark, melanin-enriched skin makes it possible for her to survive, at least for brief periods, in daylight.
This new twist is rich with symbolic valence, and Butler takes full advantage of the opportunity to address issues of race and discrimination, but translated to the imaginary realm of vampire society. By the midpoint of Fledgling , we seem on the brink of moving beyond the conventions of genre fiction and into a new kind of socio - political novel. Butler works wonders in probing the soft underbelly of group dynamics by exploring a series of binary oppositions —between vampires (now called Ina in this new stage of the novel) and humans, between vampires and their victims (now called symbionts), and between dark-skinned and pale-skinned vampires. Each of these relationships are presented as both catalysts to the storyline and also as entry points into discussions of institutionalized power structures, slave cultures, and the dynamics of marginalized communities. She adds to the mix intriguing notions of patriarchal and matriarchal institutions within vampire society.
These aspects of the book are enriched by Butler’s peculiar ethnography, in which her protagonist Shori is presented as master over the victim/symbionts, but finds herself in a role reversal within the vampire community, where her dark skin makes her the representative of the underclass. Butler even probes the most awkward elements of this dichotomy, notably in her exploration of whether the victims who enjoy their enslavement to the Ina are capable of free will—perhaps their growing identification with their masters is a kind of Stockholm Syndrome for vampire lovers.
Even the amnesia plot now is invested with the larger significance. Shori’s inability to recall her personal history is also a failure to retain her cultural bearings. She knows that she is a member of a different race, but has no grasp of the rituals and traditions that are her legacy as an Ina. At this juncture, her lack of roots echoes the similar plight of the African diaspora, forced to recreate a new life without the support the rich fabric of their age-old culture, bereft of that most importance inheritance of all, namely a sense of who we are and where we come from.
But Butler still has surprises in store for us, and her sociopolitical sci-fi vampire amnesia novel morphs into a courtroom thriller. Shori needs to navigate through the vampire judicial system as she attempts to convict those who killed her family and left her wounded and bereft of her memories. Here are all the trappings of the legal drama, with witnesses and interrogators, expert testimony and elaborate perjuries, trial procedures and jury wrangling. Yet everything is a bit different because vampires have their own way of handling these matters.
Four months after the publication of Fledgling, Octavia Butler died at age 58. She had suffered from writer’s block in her final years, but this novel shows no signs of hesitancy or strain. The layering of different plot elements serves to amplify the suspense, and the shifts from, say, horror novel to courtroom narrative, or from sci-fi to sociology, never seem awkward. I suspect that, had Butler lived, she might have continued Shori’s saga in further works. As it stands, Fledgling is no fledgling effort, but a worthy capstone to Butler’s career.
Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz from Basic Books.