Flight Behavior

Summary (from the publisher): Discontented with her life of poverty on a failing farm in the Eastern United States, Dellarobia, a young mother, impulsively seeks out an affair. Instead, on the Appalachian mountains above her farm, she discovers something much more profoundly life-changing - a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature. As the world around her is suddenly transformed by a seeming miracle, can the old certainties they have lived by for centuries remain unchallenged?

Flight Behavior is a captivating, topical and deeply human novel touching on class, poverty, and climate change. It is Barbara Kingsolver's most accessible novel yet, and explores the truths we live by, and the complexities that lie behind them.

Review: I won this book as a giveaway on Goodreads. 

This novel centers around the dissatisfying life of Dellarobia Turnbow, who is trapped in a cycle of poverty because of  a teenage pregnancy.  Dellarobia is just kind of drifting through her life, mindlessly taking care of her kids, enduring her marriage, struggling to make ends meet. Until she is interrupted on her way to cheat on her husband by the sight of hundreds of monarch butterflies, mysteriously off course from their regular flight patterns. The media attention and influx of scientists and tourists alter the course of Dellarobia's life and force her to confront her own future and choices. 

Thematically, this reminded me so much of Kingsolver's earlier novel Prodigal Summer. Both really focus on environmental concerns and how we're ruining the planet, on women and mother hood, and the lives of small Appalachian towns. I really liked Dellarobia as a narrator in this and was saddened by her dreams of going off to college that were dashed by a unexpected pregnancy. I also really liked the insightful look at the complicated relationship she has with her mother-in-law Hester, as well as her easy friendship with Dovey.

The title of this novel was misleading, although apt. I doubt anyone glancing at it automatically thinks of migration patterns of monarch butterflies. I also think the cover description was mysterious about the butterflies and make it seem like mystical event happened on the mountainside. Since it is revealed to be monarchs fairly early on in the novel, I'm not sure what the elusive wording accomplishes.  

My main frustration with this book was that I felt like it dragged significantly, and for long periods I wasn't really sure where Kingsolver was going with the plot. I found Dellarobia's relationship with Ovid mysteriously ambiguous, and her final decision at the end of the novel rather abrupt (although not unexpected). Additionally, I was frustrated by how heavy the environmental doom and gloom theme was. I was also a bit frustrated by Dellarobia's characterization of supposedly an uneducated, untraveled woman since she senses when she's out of touch and in what way when others in her family are unaware. She reads like a woman who has experienced more but simply fallen on hard times, rather than someone who has never experienced the world.

I like the rich, introspective quality of Kingsolver's novels. She's capable of delving deep into a woman's psyche and of creating the exact feel of living in small town Appalachia. 

Stars: 3.5