This is a fine and intriguing idea, and fair enough. The plot problems begin with Dellarobia’s reaction to the butterflies, which she feels is some species of religious revelation, which causes confusion in Dellarobia and controversy in her church. The problems in Flight Behavior come from its plot construction, which is a bit of a mess, and its “big themes” which are didactically over-emphasized to the extent that readers might feel the need to take notes in case there is a test at the end.

And she makes the emotional arc of Dellarobia’s story moving and real. Her conversations are a pleasure to read.

Kingsolver makes it easy to understand and empathize with her characters even when they aren’t necessarily likable. Ovid Byron, the lepidopterist who appears to study why the Monarchs have so radically changed the migration patterns hard-wired into their DNA. Each of Kingsolver’s characters walk on to the page fully formed, convincing, and distinct: from Dellarobia’s husband Cub, to her best friend Dovey, to her family and the people in her church, to Dr. There is a great deal in Flight Behavior to enjoy and admire. The vision of the butterflies turns Dellarobia around, literally and figuratively, and send her life in new and remarkable directions. When she climbs up the wooded hills of her husband’s family’s land to meet her lover, she discovers the entire Monarch butterfly population of North America, which has settled for the winter in rural Tennessee rather than deep in Mexico, because of climate change. In Dellarobia’s case, these circumstances are a small Appalachian town, an ill-matched husband acquired through a high-school pregnancy, a small confining house with two young children, and subsistence farming on the land of her resentful in-laws.Īs Flight Behavior opens, Dellarobia is set to destroy (and so escape) her marriage through a particularly reckless and desperate act of adultery. The novel’s central character is Dellarobia Turnbow who like many Kingsolver characters is a woman with an intelligence, spirit, and sex drive too large for her circumstances. This is a good thing because Flight Behavior has several although it is still a book well worth reading.įlight Behavior has a number of shortcomings, but these do not include its language or characters, which are solid, complex, persuasive, and satisfying. Barbara Kingsolver is such a good writer that she can make you forget - or forgive - some pretty substantial problems in a novel.

Flight behavior book