Flight Behavior
Ratings20
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings20
Average rating3.7
Set in the present day in the rural community of Feathertown, Tennessee, Flight Behavior tells the story of Dellarobia Turnbow, a petite, razor-sharp 29-year-old who nurtured worldly ambitions before becoming pregnant and marrying at seventeen. Now, after more than a decade of tending to small children on a failing farm, oppressed by poverty, isolation and her husband's antagonistic family, she has mitigated her boredom by surrendering to an obsessive flirtation with a handsome younger man. In the opening scene, Dellarobia is headed for a secluded mountain cabin to meet this man and initiate what she expects will be a self-destructive affair. But the tryst never happens. Instead, she walks into something on the mountainside she cannot explain or understand: a forested valley filled with silent red fire that appears to her a miracle. After years lived entirely in the confines of one small house, Dellarobia finds her path suddenly opening out, chapter by chapter, into blunt and confrontational engagement with her family, her church, her town, her continent, and finally the world at large.
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(I thought I was taking a break. From reading about tribalism, morality, ignorance, doom. But evidently Kingsolver has been reading the same books I have and wanted to use her voice to spread the awareness. So although this wasn't the break I wanted, it served as an important wake-up call: these problems won't go away just because I stop thinking about them.)
As for the book: beautiful, as is all the Kingsolver I've read. Her language is just so vivid. Few writers get me to stop and reread (to relish) as much as she does. Flight Behavior felt different from other works of her I've read. I found its overall tone melancholic, suffused with loss. Not resigned, just ... sorrowful over lost life and lost opportunities. This is a lovely book and an important one. I wonder if it'll reach its audience.
Not my favorite Kingsolver novel (that would be The Poisonwood Bible), but a good read I got as a birthday present from roommates. Kingsolver can be a little heavy-handed with her moral lessons; in this novel, it's that we need to do something about climate change RIGHT NOW (which begs the question–who reading Kingsolver novels doesn't already believe that?). Nonetheless, she reliably provides spunky and wise female characters who are also not annoyingly perfect, and the emotional heft of this particular novel (regarding marriage, class, and identity) feels genuine.
Like most great fiction, this novel is about a lot of things. On the surface it's about the environment and the damage that climate change is doing to it. But it's also about the importance of educating ourselves–about the environment, science in general, and just about everything. Plus, it's about communities and their interaction, such as the outsiders coming to Appalachia with certain preconceived notions, as well as the notions of the local people about those outsiders. Again, education is in order on both sides of that divide.
At one point, Ovid Byron, the scientist who is studying the monarch butterflies who have suddenly settled onto a mountain in East Tennessee, says: “Ecology, [my field,] is the study of biological communities. How populations interact.” He's talking about butterflies. Kingsolver is talking about more than that.
Marvellous social observation with butterflies. Best novel I've read for a wee whilie.
