Beautiful Books: Kindred

**Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)**

Illustration from Kindred © 2019 by James Ransome

Not that far into the reading of Octavia Butler’s fourth novel, recently released in a beautiful new edition from the Folio Society, I realized that the title is a pun. The innocuous term kindred — denoting likeness, similarity, or shared ancestry — can also be split into kin – dread — fear and horror connected with one’s kin, one’s relations or ancestors.

And the latter meaning is very relevant. We begin with the narrator shattered by a bizarre injury, telling us the story of how it came about. Dana has been pulled back in time on several occasions, dragged away from her life as a writer in twentieth-century California, always suddenly, inexplicably, and with no one except her husband as a witness. Her time in the past can last minutes, weeks, or months, but she returns shortly after she left. Whatever happens to her there is real — if she gets wet she stays wet, if she’s injured she stays injured. There’s no way it can be explained away as a mental aberration, but also no way to control or manage it.

At first she has no idea why this is happening, but it soon becomes clear that it’s when a certain boy is in danger that she’s called to his side — by his fear? his need? No one can say, but the connection is undeniable. For she also discovers that he is her ancestor, that he must survive in order for her to be born.

And this is where the dread comes in. For she is black, he is white, and a slaveholder in antebellum Maryland. Her progeniture depends on an act of rape, her existence is rooted in violence and oppression. How can she come to terms with this conflict, and with the very real threats that being in the past poses to her? Is there any way to take hold of her destiny, to bring any positive action to counteract the dreadful burden of the past?

Butler herself carefully conceals her protagonist’s color for the first fifty pages, so that there should be some shock when she’s first called and treated as a “nigger.” But it’s given away by blurbs, book covers, and in the case of the new Folio Society edition, illustrations. So there’s not much point in trying to avoid talking about this “spoiler,” and there’s not much one can say about the book without acknowledging it.

For the plummeting of a modern woman into the visceral, horrifying reality of slavery is the core of the book. The time-travel conceit is absurd if one looks at it intellectually, but powerful and compelling when one takes its message to heart: slavery is not something that happened in the past, that we can say we have progressed beyond or overcome. It’s happening now, it’s in the blood of our veins and the wounds of our souls. It takes more than a couple of centuries for such wrongness to be overcome, and that will never happen if forgetting and ignoring are the only tactics we can come up with.

“Look how easily slaves are made,” Dana reflects at one point, when cruelty has reduced her to the state of abjection from which she at first proudly distanced herself. Her efforts to educate her ancestor, to mitigate the effects of his cultural conditioning, are weak and ineffective compared to the forces that drive him, the slave/owner mentality that is so hard to dispel even today. Though it is rooted in his own weakness, in pitiful dependence on the people he dominates, when combined with outward power, it takes a stranglehold that it begins to seem only violence can break.

It may appear a bleak prospect, a recipe for despair. But we know (because of the opening scene from which the rest of the book is a flashback) that Dana will survive, though terribly wounded. We know she has a marriage that has also been tested and strained by her ordeal, but that will go on. And at the same time we know that she will never be able to forget, or to let us forget, what she has gone through, the dread that runs through her veins. Her future is our present, and we bear the responsibility of making sure that the suffering of the past does not make us numb and impervious. Do some wounds, to be healed, have to remain open?

For the Folio Society edition, six illustrations and a frontispiece were created by James Ransome, one of whose previous projects was a picture book about Harriet Tubman (a figure significantly mentioned in Kindred). I always find it more satisfying when the illustrations are placed next to or at least near the corresponding text, so I was pleased to find that care was taken with this aspect, as well as making sure there was one image for each of the time-travel sections. The illustrations are richly hued and detailed watercolors, one a double-page spread, that strive to capture the emotional power of the novel. Most focus on moments of threat — hiding from searchers, witnessing a whipping, walking in a chained line — that bring home the grim atmosphere of fear that Butler’s words so effectively convey.

If you haven’t read this modern masterpiece, or if you have and want to own a keepsake copy, this is one to put on your list. With Kindred, the Folio Society adds to its short shelf of challenging, ground-breaking books that explore issues of power, oppression, and freedom: books by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Morrison. It’s a category I would dearly love to see more of. What other titles would you add, along the same lines?

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A wish come true: Howl’s Moving Castle

Illustration from Howl’s Moving Castle © 2019 by Marie-Alice Harel

For a long time, I’ve been wishing that the Folio Society would publish something, anything, by Diana Wynne Jones. And this year, my wish finally came true! Howl’s Moving Castle was the title for the 2019 House of Illustration competition cosponsored by Folio, and the winning entry has duly been published just in time for the holiday gift season. I hope you will put it on your list as well.

I’ve already written about the book itself here, and you can also read Jenny’s guest post from the first Witch Week. From these you will learn that Howl’s Moving Castle is one of the most enchanting books by one of our favorite authors, and one that we most often recommend to new readers. In his introduction to the Folio edition, YA superstar author Marcus Sedgwick agrees with us: “If a single exemplar of Wynne Jones’s life’s work had to be chosen, Howl would be a brave contender, for here we find everything that identifies her work.”

Sedgwick’s introduction is one of the bonuses you’ll find in this edition, a concise but thorough appreciation that places the novel and its author in the context of fantasy literature, highlighting both its roots in tradition and its innovative qualities. To new readers, I would suggest saving it for after you’ve read the novel itself, because it does contain plot points that would be better discovered as they occur in the story. If you already know the story, though, it’s a pleasure to see Wynne Jones (as he calls her) given due honor by a fellow author, one who benefited and learned from her example.

Excellent design, of course, is the main point of a Folio edition, and this one is a treat. From the slipcase with its iconic door image and occult symbols, to the clever binding design with magical silver accents, to the evocative endpapers and chapter headings, it’s a beautiful production.

The full-page color illustrations by competition winner Marie-Alice Harel are also delightful, sensitively drawn with a muted but not drab palette, and each with a detail that slyly pokes out of the picture frame. But six illustrations are not enough! What about Calcifer the fire demon, Sophie’s sisters, or the Witch of the Waste? What about the flowery countryside, the pastry shop, or the exotic world of Wales? There were so many wonderfully visual scenes and vividly drawn characters I would have liked to see, but we have to be content with what we have.

What we do have is a lovely book, and I hope you will buy lots of copies for lucky recipients, so that Folio will be convinced to publish more books by Diana Wynne Jones. Charmed Life, Fire and Hemlock, Power of Three, The Spellcoats, Year of the Griffin, Deep Secret … I can always keep wishing.

For more information, including a video with Marcus Sedgwick and Marie-Alice Harel discussing the new edition, see the Folio website.

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Should books be illustrated?

All books, in a sense, exist in order to bring forth pictures in the mind. But should those pictures be specifically embodied in a visual medium? When are illustrations helpful, and when are they distracting or disturbing? Is it better for readers to make their own images? Or can a good collaboration between author and illustrator create a result that is more than the sum of its parts?

When I reread the Oz books as a picture-less electronic text, I was struck by how different this experience was from reading them as a child. The images by John R. Neill, who illustrated all but the first of the original series, had made a deep impression on me. Full of life and vivid character, they contribute a piquancy that Baum’s text sometimes lacks, in its pallid or generic descriptions. I’m quite sure that this visual element was as important to me as the words for making Oz seem a real and attractive place.

Illustration by John R. Neill from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

We expect children’s books to be illustrated, but what about books for adults? We’re being increasingly shaped by visual media, and every time I go to the bookstore I see a mind-boggling array of visually stunning volumes. But novels still are seldom illustrated, nor are works of philosophy or science or history usually given an artistic, interpretive treatment.

There are some specialist publishers that do this, The Folio Society being the main one that I know of. I always get a kick out of seeing Folio do illustrated versions of unexpected works like Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, or The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud — even if I wouldn’t buy them myself, I think it’s an interesting experiment to make.

The books I’m more drawn to are the narratives, and here I often have mixed feelings. I am usually not coming at them afresh, but looking at a text that I already know and judging whether the pictures give the same impression as the reading experience. Not whether they match pictures in my head — I don’t visualize characters or settings so specifically. But the words give me certain feelings; do the pictures evoke the same feelings? Or do they go in another direction, that jars against my vaguely but often strongly held impressions?

I may like some aspect of the artist’s vision, but not be completely satisfied. One case in point is the Folio edition of The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (you are all reading Robertson Davies, aren’t you?) I love the idea of combining characters and incidents from the book, saints and figures from the Tarot. That was brilliant, and the artist did not shrink from portraying the chthonic emotion, the archetypal mythic currents that Davies seeks to expose beneath the prim moral exterior of Canadian provincial life. But I find his style too aggressively ugly overall, and thought there should have been some element of beauty and mystery as well. To me, that was an important element of the trilogy too. (I do love the cover, which is perfect.)

Cover of the Deptford Trilogy, design by Peter Suart

It’s rather like the problem of translation: a work translated into another language can never be the same as the original, but it can strive to give a similar experience, based on the particular conventions and associations in the second language. Is it archaic, formal, wild, deliberate, transgressive, prissy, melodious, laconic, flippant? These qualities can be conveyed using the tools available in another language — which may be quite different from those in the first, but still reach toward a similar effect.

So in the “language” of art one can try to strive after such similarity of effect. Opinions will differ about the success of such projects, because each reader has a somewhat different experience of a text. And there can be multiple treatments that are satisfying in different ways, too. I don’t think there’s any definitive or right answer to the question of how to represent a book’s contents, but it’s a rather fascinating question.

How do you feel about illustrated books? Are you attracted by them, or do you prefer your text unadorned? Are there some illustrations you find more successful than others?

Linked in the Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight!

Author Guest Post: The Lover’s Path

Hard on the heels of the Dante-inspired In a Dark Wood, I had the opportunity to join in the blog tour for The Lover’s Path, which is spreading the word about new electronic editions of a beautiful “illustrated novella of Venice” by author-artist Kris Waldherr. This atmospheric story of forbidden romance is complemented by brief vignettes about lovers throughout history and legend, sensitively portrayed in rich, glowing images. Presented as if it were an artifact from the “Museo di Palazzo Filomela,” with attendant notes, maps, and museum information, it melds history and imagination in a way that will intrigue and delight lovers of Renaissance art and classical mythology.

The original print edition was a deluxe production with removable letters and other tactile features that greatly enhanced the reading experience; the e-book is available in several forms, including from PDF to Kindle to full-color interactive editions. I was curious about how the author found the process of transferring this unique content into a digital form, and pleased that she agreed to share her thoughts. It turns out that to create the e-book, she had to reimagine the whole project — and added much new and unique content in the process. Read on to learn more about her path of design discovery.

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The Rebirth of The Lover’s Path by Kris Waldherr

Of all my books, The Lover’s Path is one of my favorites. It was also one of my most complex to write, design, and illustrate. The Lover’s Path took a full decade of work before it was finally published in 2005 by Abrams Books as a full color gift book. And now, another decade later, I’m delighted it is finally available as an e-book—a rebirth that almost didn’t happen.

Set in Renaissance Venice, The Lover’s Path was inspired by the true story of a courtesan named Tullia d’Aragona and her younger sister. It included illustrations, artifacts, and love myths from a faux museum called the Museo di Palazzo Filomela. The print book included letters, tarot cards, and other tactile elements. Though I’d obtained digital rights from the publisher in 2012, I couldn’t bring myself to begin work on it. It was too overwhelming. Another road block: the square dimensions of the print book didn’t translate well for e-readers, which are more horizontal of proportion. Was there any way I could make my book more beautiful, more emotionally satisfying, more interactive as an e-book? I couldn’t see how. No matter how exquisitely I designed the digital edition, it wouldn’t be the same.

I was about to consign The Lover’s Path to the halls of Beloved Books of Years Past. We’ll always have Venice, I told myself. Then I realized: the best way forward was a new way forward. This eureka moment gave me the creative freedom to treat the digital book as a separate entity from the print. So hooray!

Here’s how The Lover’s Path has been reborn for a new world: Not only does the digital edition sport a lovely new cover, the text has been expanded to flesh out the story. (The text in the original print edition was kept short because of cost—four color books are uber-expensive to produce.) I was also able to add new “artifacts” from the Museo di Palazzo Filomela in an expanded chapter. Coolest of all, the iPad edition even includes interactive graphics and maps.

As a result, I believe the e-book is a much richer, more immersive literary and artistic experience than the print edition, as lovely as it was. However, what pleases me most is that The Lover’s Path is now a living book, which can be updated at will. For example, I plan to record a sound walk in Venice this summer; this will find its way into future multimedia editions.

Now that the e-book edition of The Lover’s Path is here at last, I am so excited to share it with the world. And remember, to truly love another, you must walk along the lover’s path wherever it may lead you.

Kris Waldherr is the author and illustrator of The Lover’s Path: An Illustrated Novella of Venice, which is now available for the first time as an e-book. She is also the author of Doomed Queens: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends, The Book of Goddesses, and many other books and card decks. Learn more at LoversPathBook.com.

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