‘Flight Behavior’ is an interesting story which deals with two themes – the travails of a farm wife and the issue of climate change. What happens next – to the butterfly species and to Dellarobia – forms the rest of the story. It is probably because of global warming which might lead to the extinction of this butterfly species. She discovers that the presence of so many monarch butterflies is not a good sign. Dellarobia becomes friends with him and after a while gets to work in his team. A scientist comes with his assistants and starts research. Soon everyone in the town is talking about how Dellarobia had this vision. It is an ocean of monarch butterflies – millions and millions of them – which give that illusion.
The only difference is that the scene is not a lake of fire. And they see what Dellarobia had seen earlier. Dellarobia tells her husband to first checkout the mountain before deciding to cut the trees. When his family protests, he refuses to listen to them. Meanwhile her father-in-law signs a contract with a logging company to cut down the trees in the mountain. She comes back home without meeting the young man. Dellarobia is astounded and she thinks this is a sign. The valley seems to be filled with a lake of fire. When she reaches the top, she sees a glorious sight.
The first sentence in the book is a beautiful, trademark Barbara Kingsolver first sentence – “A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.”). One day, to escape from her dreary life, she drives up the mountain to meet a young man and have an affair with him, unmindful of the consequences (It is the first scene in the story. She likes her husband, but she feels that she and her husband are different in many ways and her parents-in-law aren’t really nice to her. She is not very happy with her life though she loves her children. Unfortunately, her child is stillborn, but she stays married to Cub and later has a son, Preston, and a daughter, Cordie. When she was in high school, she had wanted to go to college, but she got pregnant and so got married to Cub.
Dellarobia lives near the mountains alongwith her husband and works in the farm of her in-laws. ‘Flight Behavior’ is about a farm wife, Dellarobia, and her life. I finished reading ‘Flight Behavior’ yesterday and here is what I think. When I discovered that she has come out with a new book, I couldn’t resist getting it. I had wanted to read other books by her since that time. I read Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Prodigal Summer’ last year and liked it very much.
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