Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
November 6, 2012 by Harper
Hardcover, 436 Pages
Review Copy

Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

Nobody can deny the power of Kingsolver's beauty to detail and her exquisite writing that weaves social and political commentary into entertaining fiction that makes you stop and ponder. Flight Behavior is certainly a book I wanted to love and I had high expectations considering my fondness of The Poisonwood Bible, however Flight Behavior lost its story in the muck of preachy environmentalism and pointing the finger at you stinky cretins who don't believe in global warming. What could of been an actual powerful story got lost in liberal propaganda with no facts to back it up.At times lengths of conversations, drawn out yacking about Americans consumption of natural resources equaling the end of the world as we know it drove me to near insanity.

I hate over the top political slants from either side and every character seemed to represent a point the author was trying to get across, whether the emphasis was about global warming or caring for others, Kingsolver made it adamant to slip in a rant, a taunt or life lesson she could preach to the reader about. Even her use of provocative character Dellarobia, the bitter middle aged house wife looking for adventure couldn't save the overall surface drivel dished out to the unsuspecting reader. The story while clever in writing was bent to Kingsolvers aggressive approach teaching us to save the world...er, trees..butterflies,   I mean the community of people living in this fictional Tennessee. Those things being said along with my deep disdain for all things global warming, I have to give credit where credit is due and that being the talented way the story was presented, in a sense it was genius, I mean a woman teetering with infidelity, a mad-type scientist who predicts dooms day by the butterflies, it screams dystopia, even though its not, even though it felt like a trick.

Overall not my cup of tea, but many readers who love drawn out literature will jump at this one.

2.5/5- Contemporary Fiction
Thanks to Harper and TLC Book Tours for Review Copy