Book Thoughts: Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the fourth book I've read by Kingsolver, and like the others, Kingsolver delivers for her readers. Kingsolver has many strengths as a writer, but the combination of beautiful and readable prose, with memorable, complex characters that she develops consistently, I think, sets her apart from many others.

This story is many things. First and foremost, I think, its the story of Dellarobia. Dellarobia seems stuck, in a marriage and family (not necessarily her two kids) that developed from forced circumstances - pregnant at 17 and thus married to Cub. Her life as a wife and mother in rural Tennessee if a far cry from the dreams she had growing up. In a pivotal moment, as she is going up a mountain near her house, she encounters a nesting site of Monarch butterflies.

This leads into one of the other "things" the book is about - science and climate change. The butterflies should be nesting in Mexico, but apparently have nested too far north, due to climate change issues in Mexico. This brings in some scientists to study the phenomena, along with various protesters, and leads to various conflicts of culture and belief. Kingsolver does a good job of presenting all of this, alongside the development of Dellarobia, without getting in the way of the story's pacing.

The only drawback to the story, for me (and why its 4 instead of 5 stars), is that the story ends in the middle of Dellarobia's development. Certainly, she has made major life changes that would not have been foreseeable for her at the beginning of the novel; but as a reader, having spent so much time with the character, you want to see more (and perhaps that's unfair on my part). Dellarobia's development and changes are hopeful for the future. Unfortunately, the butterflies' future is not. So while the novel ends on possibilities of escape for Dellarobia, the outlook for the natural world's escape from climate change's impacts are bleaker, as well as for the potential for any dialogue among the various cultural conflicts that arise in the book.

As such, despite the investment in Dellarobia and how her story may change for the better, the book leaves the reader a bit depressed. That said, the book is very much worth a read.

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