Flight Behavior (2012)
4.5 Stars out of 5
Barbara Kingsolver
436 pages
Barbara Kingsolver is the rare writer that combines her
training and experience in science (biology in her case) with an ability to
write emotionally compelling stories about people; stories that are highly relatable
to wide parts of American culture. To be sure, she leans to the left
politically and did managed to offend some with her comments on the war in Afghanistan
by comparing it to schoolboys fighting on the playground. She will probably
offend many of the same people with her 2012 book (her seventh novel), “Flight
Behavior” wherein she relates the worsening situation our planet faces as
regards climate change. This book lacks the inspiring philosophical footing on
which her best book, 1998’s “Poisonwood Bible”, once stood so ably. But what “Flight
Behavior” does do well is discuss how our changing weather is affecting the
poor and she does it in a reasonably even-handed manner by giving voice to that
same group of people about why they discard the whole concept of climate
change. This latter point bothers me the most about the effects of climate
change: why should one of the groups that should be screaming the loudest as
droughts devastate their farms or tornados shred their homes, won’t even listen
to the evidence of climate change, but instead cling to the idea that climate
change is a “liberal” idea and thus by definition, wrong. How did science
become so politicized – to the point where rational discourse has become impossible?
The absolute best part of Kingsolver’s book is her opening
prolog. In it we meet Dellarobia Turnbow as she struggles to climb the mountain
behind her two-bedroom home in eastern Tennessee. Dellarobia is trying to hike
a hill in clothing ill-suited to the effort. As the reader listens into her
internal dialog during her hike, it quickly becomes apparent that Dellarobia is
equally ill-suited to the venture. She smokes and is short of breath. Worse,
she is marching to a liaison with a younger man.
In keeping with her character’s unhappiness and indecision, she has never consummated
her imagined infidelities and one wonders based on her thoughts whether or not
this hike will conclude in a similar failure to act. Her thoughts though are a
magnificent introduction to the style and skill of Barbara Kingsolver in terms
of her ability to create and describe her characters. And in keeping with the
abilities of a skilled writer such as Kingsolver, the hike’s purpose is not to
simply introduce us to Dellarobia and her problems, but is instead to lead the
reader into the book’s main premise. That premise, or an example derived from
the premise lies in a high mountain valley directly in Dellarobia’s path.
As she hikes and pants her way up the mountain, arguing with
herself every step of way, she starts to see things that ought not to be there.
Too late, she realizes that in order to impress her boyfriend she left her
glasses behind in the cabin. The consequences of this to the near-sighted
Dellarobia is that as stares into the distance, she cannot make out what she is
looking at, but despite all reason, she thinks it is a lake of fire. Beautiful,
billowing but silent clouds of orange flames rise into the air and swirl about
the trees, Dellarobia is dumfounded. Shocked to the point of nearly falling,
she abandons her assignation and flees back down the hill to her six year old
son and two year old daughter; now in the care of her “poisoned” and poisonous
mother-in-law, Hester. In time, Dellarobia learns that the “flames” were
enormous clouds of Monarch butterflies (or King Billies in the local parlance).
What are they doing in southern Appalachia when they should be far to the south
in Mexico? This is the question Kingsolver uses to open up the issue of a
warming planet. She will bring in a thoughtful and kind scientist, Professor Ovid
Bryon from New Mexico to provide the scientific point of views expressed in
this book. But it is Dellarobia that will play the pivotal role by acting as the
“translator” between the rural life of Tennessee and the outside world; an
outside world that could be defined by the citizens of the hollow where
Dellarobia lives as anything further than the next town over; you know, the one with the
community college.
Kingsolver has done her usual clever job of creating
characters that are quite three dimensional. Dellarobia is for the most part
intelligent and thoughtful, and yet at times she can be as egocentric as anyone
else as she decries anyone not from her part of Tennessee and their presumed
disdain for her people – this aspect of hers gets really tiring at several
points in the story. Hester is yet another remarkable example of how Kingsolver
creates real, highly believable people in her novels. When we first meet Hester
she truly seems a poisonous character, the person in the book the least likely
to prove to be any kind of ally to Dellarobia. But as with real life, there is
a reason for Hester’s hatefulness – some of it is self-pity, sure, and some of
it parallels a few of the same travails that Dellarobia has tried to negotiate
as she grew up. These various areas where the two women have something in
common, something all too common in rural America, allow Hester to finally
unbend and provide some badly needed incentive to Dellarobia. Dellarobia will
stop listening only to herself, will listen to Hester in a way, and will as a consequence stop being
miserable with her bighearted but dim husband Cub. Cub will cease to be solely a goad to Dellarobia’s misery and indecision, and will instead provide a
second kind of incentive to Dellarobia. By the book’s ending, Dellarobia will
have come to a conclusion as to who she is and what she must do.
Kingsolver takes us on this journey of self-discovery via an
exploration of the Monarch butterfly’s unique life cycle. Their history
features a multi-thousand mile migration from Mexico to Canada, and back again
over the course of three Monarch generations – no generation making the
migration having any kind of living guide that had previously made the trip.
Someone not interested in science may find some of Kingsolver’s explanation of
the Monarch life difficult or at the very least a little tedious. That being said,
no one is likely to find Professor Byron’s anger at the inactivity of the world’s
people as their homelands catch fire or drowned as a consequence of global
warming. And yet as passionate as his speech is near the book’s end, it is what
he thinks about his speech that I find the most intriguing. Byron is
embarrassed at his anger; he fears the reaction of his peers. I cannot find
fault with Kingsolver writing Byron in this manner, but it fills me with
dismay. It fills me with dismay because Byron’s oft-stated decision to stick to
the numbers, to describe the situation and to somehow distance his emotions
from what he is measuring and the long term impact of changes that he feels may
be irreversible and not to talk to the press or anyone else that will listen –
this is to me, almost as tragic as the science deniers in the world. The
deniers are a problem; why they deny is discussed in the book to some extent.
Their motivation to deny is aggravating in the extreme. But the scientists who
know what is going on and yet for professional reasons keep their passions and
largely their voices in check are for me a bigger problem. If there is one
message in this book it is this: it is time to start screaming “bloody murder”; well, long past time actually.
Because “bloody murder” is what it is going to be happening to our grandchildren.
“Flight Behavior” is an excellent and well written book. I
keep waiting for a follow up to “Poisonwood Bible” in terms of its profundity
coupled to Kingsolver’s excellent character development. “Flight Behavior” is
not that high quality follow-up (2009’s “The Lacuna” was even less so – though the
subject material of HUAC was interesting). However, Kingsolver has perhaps
decided to take on the role I refer to above. She is with her writing attacking
social and scientific issues that need to be thought about by the average
American; and since Kingsolver weaves her social agenda into her stories of the
little people (a secretary in “The Lacuna”, a young mother in “Flight Behavior”,
or American missionaries in the Congo in “Poisonwood Bible”) she can work
through a discussion on these social issues while at the same time exploring
the loves and hates of those same “little people”. It is an interesting
approach to some big issues. I greatly admire her writing and subject matter
choices. I strongly recommend “Flight Behavior”.
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