Flight Behavior

By: Barbara Kingsolver

Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver

Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best seller

Indie best seller

Barnes & Noble best seller

National best seller

Amazon Best Book of the Month

Indie Next Pick

Best book of the year: New York Times Notable, Washington Post Notable, Amazon Editor’s Choice, USA Today’s Top Ten (#1), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star

Prize-winning author: Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award), Orange Prize for Fiction

Prize-winning author: National Humanities Medal, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Orange Prize for Fiction, Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award)

"Kingsolver is a gifted magician of words." (Time)

The extraordinary New York Times best-selling author of The Lacuna (winner of the Orange Prize), The Poisonwood Bible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver returns with a truly stunning and unforgettable work.

Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking 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 center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world.

Flight Behavior 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.

©2012 Barbara Kingsolver (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers

The world needs more like this!

Barbara Kingsolver has been a favorite novelist for many years. Although this novel was published 10+ years ago, it is more compelling and enduring today as climate patterns and natural disasters have worsened. Gorgeously written with incredible talent for language and storytelling, this author and her book deserves more readers, and the Earth deserves more stewards. As with Poisonwood Bible, this tale completely captivated me, for all of its beauty, wonder, humanity, sadness, and hope.

A bit too long.

Overall I enjoyed this book but I thought it was a bit long. I appreciate the author’s advocacy re: climate change which was told through the story of monarch butterflies but the details at times were monotonous. Unfortunately the story of the family got lost and I would have liked that to have been the focus. This could have been two separate stories.

A double Entendre

One of my favorite books by Barbara Kingsolver and a book I frequently recommend, Flight Behavior tackles the subject of climate change as it looks at the change in migration pattern of the Monarch Butterfly. When an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies halt their migration to Mexico at a small town farm in rural Tennessee, scientists descend on the farm to study the phenomenon as
local area farmers deny the existence of climate change and religious leaders make their own proclamations on the occurrence.

In a double entendre, Flight Behavior simultaneously looks at a young, discontented housewife who married at age 17 due to an unplanned pregnancy and, years later, is still settling for what life throws her way. “But being a stay-at-home mom was the loneliest kind of lonely, in which she was always and never by herself." Having sacrificed her own dreams Dellarobia finds herself at the center of the conflict between her husbands family, rural farmers, the religious community, the journalists and the scientists. It is through her contact with the scientists and journalists (and thus, the outside world) that Dellarobia begins to wonder if her life could be more than what she has initially settled for. It wasn’t all a waste,” she told him over and over, holding on. Some things they got right, she was sure of that. The children. And for all the rest they wept, a merged keening that felt bottomless. For the years and years of things that didn’t exist, fantasies of flight where there was no flight. Nothing, really, but walking away on your own two feet. She felt tears frozen on her face.” “He could construct defeat from any available material and live inside it, but for once Dellarobia didn't go there with him. She was going ahead.”

An emotional, captivating story that looks at the factors and lives that make up the conflicts surrounding climate change and societal schisms. “For scientists, reality is not optional.” "Cub shook his head, "Weather is the Lord's business.” *****

For more book reviews follow me on Instagram at #emptynestreader #flightbehavior #barbarakingsolver #harpercollins #globalwarming #monarchbutterflies #migration #bookstagramalabama #bookstagrammichigan #readalittlelearnalittlelivealittle

New perspective

My husband and I loved this book. Barbara Kingsolver has an amazing ability to tell a compelling story that also teaches and enlightens. Her portrayal of the rural perspective on climate change is invaluable as we try to figure out how to communicate with people who have a totally different view of science from those who can clearly see the reasons for concern.

Kingsolver Wows Me Again!

Kingsolver has an astute way of writing about beauty, nature and the human experience in a way that is flowery yet authentic. When I take in her work, I feel closer to my humanity and the natural world somehow simultaneously. I think she did a darn good job narrative, too!

A Library Must Have!

Would you listen to Flight Behavior again? Why?

Flight Behavior is a book that has stayed with me from the moment I listened to it on Audible. It was a book that I purchased for my own library as well as a gift for both my mother and mother-in-law. There is no questioning that Barbara Kingsolver knows how to write a good story. It's an important subject, told in away that you just can't turn away from. This book is narrated by the author making it easy to listen to. I could focus on the content without being distracted.

Fire and magic

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors. I could tell she was the narrator without looking. This is her story, and that was palpable in her performance.

A Wake-Up Call

Barara is a time-tested expert who knows her stuff. This is fiction that has the credibility of a scienific journal. Come for the fiction, stay for the truth!

A Great Read / Listen !!!

If you could sum up Flight Behavior in three words, what would they be?

Worth every minute.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Dellarobia Turnbow was my favorite character. She had wit, warmth, spitfire, and guts... I was drawn in. I grew to care about her, and hope to God that Kingsolver gifts us with a sequel! I'd love to know what the next chapters would be for Dellarobia and her family!

What does Barbara Kingsolver bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Barbara Kingsolver's gentle, easy Southern female voice and inflections were just the ticket in bringing her own characters and story to life for me.

If you could rename Flight Behavior, what would you call it?

I wouldn't retitle this book. It's apt not only for the environmental theme of climate change and its potential effect: aberration of the Monarch's migration... But also for Dellarobia herself as she, too, veers into a different course within her life.

Any additional comments?

This is an excellent production by Audible of a hauntingly engaging and beautiful book. I highly recommend this one! Bravo!

Moments of truth knit into a compelling story

I loved this. I work in a climate-related field and I really appreciated how she embedded science in a completely engaging story. Yes, it was ever so slightly didactic, but the emotional truth-telling more than made up for it, as planetary change whirled individual lives into larger patterns and brought different segments of society together. It worked well as an audiobook because each moment and scene stood on its own, and the slower pace than reading allowed me to savor the fine word choices. Never did I have to try to remind myself who a character was or where they fit into the plot. Kingsolver's voice also turns out to be perfectly pitched and paced to read her own work. I loved it. Did I say that?