Flight Behaviour is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breath-taking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths.
Kingsolver's riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions-religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians-trapping her in the centre of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world.
Flight Behaviour is arguably Kingsolver's most thrilling and accessible novel to date, and like so many other of her acclaimed works, represents contemporary American fiction at its finest.
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[A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one of part rapture]***
(@FaberBooks, 18 April 2013, first published 1 November 2012, 600 pages, paperback, borrowed from @GlasgowLib)
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Well, its official, I am a rabid fan of Kingsolver. After reading several of her books in a row she's become one of my favourite writers. Flight Behaviour is very typical of Kingsolver's fiction, a seemingly simple story at the core which speaks volumes about our society and the world at large. First off, I loved the main character's name, Dellarobia. The simple story at the core of the book is that Dellarobia is very unhappy. She married too young and had children too young and now feels trapped and suffocated. She makes reckless plans that could lead to the end of her marriage and nature gives her a wake-up call. The other core of the story is climate change and the devastating impact on nature and the environment. Kingsolver doesn't tackle this in a heavy-handed or preachy way, using the story of Dellarobia's discovery that most of the Monarch butterfly population have chosen to migrate to a hill close to her farm, going against their natural instinct to winter in Mexico. This causes a furore and environmentalists and the media suddenly focus on Dellarobia and her family. I got completely absorbed in this book.
