For a work so early in Butler's career, this is a remarkably stunning read. No need, really, to touch upon the now oft-described plot: Butler's aim is the experience--both graphically physical but more psychological: it works its way through our time-traveling narrator and her white husband; it impacts their relationship (alas, not as thoroughly explored as it might have been); but it is one of the first books I've read to explore the nuance of living in a culture of slavery rather than merely stating or claiming the complex challenges.

Butler's liberated (at least for the 1970s) narrator discovers how sinuous the workings of plantation life might well have been, how insidious the rationalizations of submission to authority. And while the book is tightly-written and highly suspenseful, her handling of dialogue and subtler action reveals the various pulls of power humans have over one another, because of and in spite of the power dynamics between them. 

There are no apologies, justifications, or qualifications for slavery and its adherents here. But we instead experience a kind of subjugation and oppression which moves far deeper than the given physicality of this institution. (Now to go see how Hulu has handled it . . . )