Novel Exposition

Firstly, the story begins on Dana's birthday. She and her husband just moved from their apartment to go into their own house. While they are still unpacking, Dana starts to feel dizzy, then everything vanished around her and suddenly, she was outdoors. She was on the ground beside a river, with a child drowning in it. Dana jumps in to save him, and she ends up saving his life. Moments later, she is transported back to her living room. But in the prologue, the novel's first sentence to get our attention is Dana losing an arm. 

Personally, I think getting the reader in action as soon as you can is a very good way of getting the reader's attention. Starting the book by describing everything is a very boring way of starting a novel, because authors often take pages and pages to describe every details of characters and places. I think the reader should imagine himself all these things, that's the magic of books. We all read the same stories, but they are so differently imagined from a person to another. In this book, what keeps me reading is that action rarely stops, Dana is almost always in trouble, which keeps me on my toes.

 Obviously, Octavia chose to talk about racism and slavery this novel. A blatant example is the black people back in 1815, the year when Dana is drawn back, who are severely persecuted by the white, as they are slaves for most of them. Others need papers to attest that they are free, which shows a big form of control over the blacks. I can't really relate to these conflicts, mostly because I am white, obviously, but also because in all the schools that I've been to, I don't think I have seen more than three black people in the school at the same time. Almost all the students were white, and the only black I know is my hairdresser, so I don't really know him much.