A Work of Fiction that Mirrors A Frightening Reality

Title: Flight Behavior
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Host:  Gail

Barbara Kingsolver's latest work of fiction, Flight Behavior opens with young Dellarobia Turnbow's desperate climb from her narrow life in rural Appalachia up the mountain behind her home and toward an illicit affair sure to ruin her life. Instead, she is brought to her knees by an astounding sight -- "The forest blazed with its own internal light." She has no explanation for what she sees. "The burning trees were put here to save her. It was the strangest conviction she'd ever known, and still she was sure of it."

Monarchs clustered in trees near Angangueo, Michoacan, Mexico. 

What Dellarobia sees as a forest fire is, in fact, something more terrible. The entire population of East Coast monarch butterflies is wintering on an Appalachian hilltop instead of their natural winter haven in Mexico. Shifting weather patterns have upset the natural order, and the monarchs are in the wrong place, where the continued annual migration from Canada to Mexico and back is now in jeopardy. Soon, Dellabrobia's community is overrun with scientists, reporters, and sightseers, and her life spins forward on an unpredictable trajectory.

Insights and Opinions

+ Kingsolver is a gifted writer whose works we all look forward to reading. But while she has imagined an ingenious plot here, we found ourselves feeling the book veers too close to a polemic against anti-science boobs, with some characters who are more caricatures than fully rounded people we could believe. The female TV reporter represents more of a type than an individual, as do the graduate students. Even Ovid, who is a central character, reads flat and only comes fully to life toward the end of the book in the scenes that take place after his wife joins him on Dellarobia's land.

+ Through most of the book, Ovid exists only in Dellarobia's head. We see him entirely through her eyes and her imagination. But he never gets to be on stage, unless he's making a speech that supports the author's position.

+ Shirley observed that Kingsolver's women characters are the most fully realized. Dellarobia's husband  Cub seems so stunted -- and certainly that is Kingsolver's intention -- but his diminished self renders him more of a cardboard cutout on the page than the living, breathing, understandably limited man we wanted him to be. His limitations are so profound, it's difficult to believe that Dellarobia's friend Crystal finds him fascinating and attractive. There are writers who are weak at getting deeply into the opposite sex, and it doesn't hurt the book. But in this case, it does.

Female monarch butterfly in May

+ Kingsolver clearly has an agenda, and we get it. But she is preaching to the choir here.

+ Having said all that, the more we discussed the book, the more we found to like about it. Kingsolver's prose is a pleasure to read. Her small descriptions of life are sometimes stunning and profound, as when Dellarobia discovers that her mother-in-law Hester has always expected her to leave. "It was an earthquake, an upheaval of buried surfaces in which nothing was added or taken away. Her family was still her family, an alliance of people at odds, surviving like any other by turning the everyday blind eye." Kingsolver is a wonderful storyteller and an important voice. We just want her to write the people, not the cause.

Articles worth reading

Migration of Monarch Butterflies Shrinks Again Under Inhospitable Conditions

Migrating Monarch Butterflies in "Grave Danger," Hit New Low

Oddments and Telling Details

+ Our conversation kicked off with a round robin on each person's methods for maintaining physical balance, which mostly involved things to do while brushing one's teeth.

+ Joanne had actually been to the monarch over-wintering spot in Mexico, and brought pictures to share with us. Really quite wonderful.

+ If you have a yard or garden, do the butterflies a favor and plant some milkweed!

+ We chose a book for March: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt