Play Book Tag discussion

Flight Behavior
This topic is about Flight Behavior
15 views
November 2022: Book Club > Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver - 3.5 Stars

Comments Showing 1-1 of 1 (1 new)    post a comment »
dateUp arrow    newest »

 Olivermagnus (lynda11282) | 4873 comments Eleven years after a shotgun marriage to sweet, slow-moving Cub, Dellarobia Turnbow's dreams of education and a better life are at an all-time low. When we first meet her, she’s the mother of two, walking alone up a mountain to commit adultery with a 22-year-old telephone repairman.

Suddenly, her life is changed by the magical, incomprehensible sight. Fifteen million monarch butterflies that have come to rest on the Turnbow property in Tennessee. Is this a vision from God? Although Dellarobia doesn’t realize it yet, that moment proves life-changing for her. It turns out the butterflies have gone off course from their normal wintering site in Mexico because of pollution and climate change, and it's questionable whether they can survive the cold this far north.

When Ovid Byron, a sophisticated entomologist from the island of St. Thomas who has devoted his life's work to the monarchs, comes to study the alarming phenomenon, he hires Dellarobia as a lab assistant, opening up her world exponentially.

Kingsolver carefully draws the intricate ecosystem of faith, farming and debt in small-town America. Barbara Kingsolver has a political agenda, but is a storyteller first and foremost. Her message remains beautifully presented in her gifts as a novelist, essayist, and poet.

I liked the story, which was never dull, but the energy faded as it moved along. It was sweet, sad and alarming. Few writers can match Ms. Kingsolver for her turns of phrase and that explains her incredible success over the decades.


back to top