Parable of the Sower

Dystopian literary novel written in the 90s and following Lauren, an African American teenager who lives inside a gated community in California in the years 2020s, where society has all but collapsed and chaos reigns.  I was especially attracted to this book after seeing a tweet during the California fires earlier this year, showing an excerpt of the novel.  Overall this was a very good read. I loved the world building, quite prescient in anticipating many of our problems today (climate change, political and social unrest). Bleak yet ultimately hopeful, in the character's will to survive and thrive beyond the atrocities, I did like the discussion and themes developed by the author like survival, climate change, systemic and individual violence, drug addiction, racial/social inequality, government corruption, religion, reshaping god/faith etc (though it didn't particularly touched me being an atheist) etc. 
That being said, I wasn't a fan of Lauren almost “Emotionless” tone to her voice, even if it was like a reverse image of her ability as hyperempathy, the diary entries felt more like stating a list of facts and not living the situations. I also wished we saw more of her abilities during the entirety of the novel.  One of the relationship has a huge age gap that gave me the ick to be honest. 
Still I'll probably read the sequel to see how the character's story evolved.