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 …
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.
Vivid writing, great characters. She beats her drum pretty obviously, but the plot and characters still pulled me along, and she still had surprises for me.
(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.
Marvellous social observation with butterflies. Best novel I've read for a wee whilie.
Very pleasant book on class, ecology, and the combinations thereof. The heroine, trapped in both poverty and unwanted marriage, encounters an odd migrational behaviour of monarch butterflies and the problems of ecological disbalancing, gets involved in research and ends up leaving her husband and going to college. The framework is somewhat banal by now, but the book is much better than this. The description of the small Tennessee community to which the heroine belongs is probably the best thing about the book as well as the heroine's dealing with her class identity.
I generally like Kingsolver's novels, but this one didn't particularly draw me in. It's a quick and easy read, in spite of its size. But overall, I had the sense that Kingsolver focused more on conveying her specific environmental concerns, which I happen to agree with, than writing an enveloping, rich story. I'm not sure what I would have changed, because I liked her characters. But there wasn't a depth to them that I'm used to seeing in Kingsolver's novels. I don't know.
I was really psyched about "The Lacuna" though, and maybe I set the bar too high.
I loved the her use of names, and her explanation of their origin. I took advantage of the ability to scan an e-book, to see where "Delarobia" entered the narrative.
Mostly I felt...meh about Kingsolver's latest. I do appreciate her talent, and I think my reaction is mostly based on reading too much action-packed fantasy for a while now. I do think she is incredible at character development. I really felt Dellarobia's internal struggle. I set it down for a while because I got bored. But again, I think that was me. And I think it reminded me way too much of "Prodigal Summer."
I read this book for the Sony Reader Book Club, and in the spirit of full disclosure it was a gift from Sony for participating in their VIP Book Club. In the end, I'm very glad it was a book club selection so that I was exposed to a good book that I probably never would have chosen to read on my own. Flight Behavior was a hard starter for me and it took me quite a while to decide that I was enjoying the book. In some ways, it cut way too close to home and made me take some pretty uncomfortable looks at my own life, so your mileage may vary if you didn't marry a farm boy and deal with a cold and controlling mother-in-law. Barbara Kingsolver understood that particular family dynamic so well that I felt I was right back there as the outsider/interloper who was …
I read this book for the Sony Reader Book Club, and in the spirit of full disclosure it was a gift from Sony for participating in their VIP Book Club. In the end, I'm very glad it was a book club selection so that I was exposed to a good book that I probably never would have chosen to read on my own. Flight Behavior was a hard starter for me and it took me quite a while to decide that I was enjoying the book. In some ways, it cut way too close to home and made me take some pretty uncomfortable looks at my own life, so your mileage may vary if you didn't marry a farm boy and deal with a cold and controlling mother-in-law. Barbara Kingsolver understood that particular family dynamic so well that I felt I was right back there as the outsider/interloper who was never really invited into family life.
In the opening chapters of the book, Dellarobia Turnbow's life is so unhappy that I found myself having a hard time reading for more than a half hour or so. I kept getting up to do happier things while I thought about what I had just read. She is sorely tempted to cheat on her husband when she stumbled across a phenomenon on the family's failed Christmas tree farm that begins to open her up to new ideas and see a bigger world than life on her in-laws' farm. Change happens very slowly for her, and I kept finding myself trying to force her to make discoveries faster and take charge of her life for once instead of just letting things happen to her. At times the pace of the book maddened me and that's when I realized that Dellarobia had finally gotten to me. The transition between not caring for or about her and then bonding deeply with her struggle happened so gradually in a hidden corner of my mind that it took me quite by surprise. It made for a huge payoff when Dellarobia opened herself up to a new job, a fresh outlook, and finally came up with a plan for her own happiness.
This is a book that will stay with me and make me think long after I read the last page. I'm grateful that I experienced it.
