Flight Behavior

(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.

♥ Barbara Kingsolver ♥

If you have read all of her books, after awhile they start to be a tiny bit predictable, and I do not care at all. I would read 1000 books about marginalized women fighting the odds to rally their communities to protect the environment.

I loved Dellarobia and Dovey. I loved all the layers here, and I loved that each character had depth and complexity–even the megachurch pastor, even the controlling mother-in-law, even the grad students. I love the intersectionality of class and race and gender. I love the the privilege checking. I love the butterflies.

I LOVE BARBARA KINGSOLVER.

Short Review: I don't know how Kingsolver writes about such serious topics without it feeling like propaganda. Most ‘issue fiction' is very heavy handed. Kingsolver somehow write in a way that is about the art of the book and the serious topics just seem to give weight to the art instead of tearing the art down. This is a novel about global warming. But it is about people, not just a topic. An east TN woman is the main character. She is so tied up by her poverty, her oppressive life, and her mediocre marriage that she just wants to escape. Millions of Monarch butterflies come to her husband's family's land instead of their normal Mexican wintering grounds. For her and the butterflies life becomes unmoored.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/flight-behavior/