 1st edition cover | |
| Author | Barbara Kingsolver |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | American English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | 2012 |
| Pages | 600 |
| ISBN | 978-0-06-212427-2 |
| Preceded by | The Lacuna |
| Followed by | Unsheltered |
Flight Behavior [1] is a 2012 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. [2] It is her seventh novel, a New York Times Bestseller, [3] and was declared "Best book of the year" by the Washington Post and USA Today . [4]
Dellarobia Turnbow is a 28-year-old discontented housewife living with her poor family on a farm in Appalachia. On a hike to begin an affair with a telephone repairman, Turnbow finds millions of monarch butterflies in the valley behind her home.
As the news of her discovery spreads, university professor Ovid Byron arrives to study the monarchs, and warns that although they are beautiful, they are a disturbing symptom of global climate change, displaced from their established winter habitat in Mexico, and that they may not survive the harsh Tennessee winter.
Writing in UK Sunday newspaper The Observer , Robin McKie found,
"In general, Flight Behaviour is an impressive work. It is complex, elliptical and well-observed. Dellarobia and her kin come over as solid but believable individuals, outlined with respect and balance. Even Cub, her much put-upon simpleton of a husband, and his dreadful, manipulative mother Hester, are ultimately accorded sympathy".
McKie was less impressed with Kingsolver's portrayal, "almost to the point of overkill", of the Turnbow family's poverty. "However", he added, "it is the issue of climate change that hangs, unspoken, over proceedings", and concluded by saying, "[...] Kingsolver makes her message clear. If only a few more scientists started screaming on TV and radio then we might have a chance to avoid the worst of the calamities that lie ahead". [6]
In The Daily Telegraph , Beth Jones noted that, "Kingsolver has carved a career from examining social issues in her novels, from economic inequality to racism. In Flight Behaviour, it's the causes and consequences of climate change that form the novel's core. As lepidopterist Ovid Bryon shouts: 'For God's sake… the damn globe is catching fire and the islands are drowning. The evidence is staring [you] in the face'". Jones found that, "[...] in Flight Behaviour she once again manages to make a global crisis seem relevant through tiny domestic details", before concluding that, "The result is a compelling plot with lyrical passages and flashes of humour. Absorbing and entertaining, Flight Behaviour engages the reader in the quotidian details of Dellarobia's life, while insisting that we never forget the crumbling world beneath her, and our, feet". [7]
Reviewing the book in The New York Times , Dominique Browning wrote of
"the intricate tapestry of Barbara Kingsolver's majestic and brave new novel", adding, "Her subject is both intimate and enormous, centered on one woman, one family, one small town no one has ever heard of — until Dellarobia stumbles into a life-altering journey of conscience. How do we live, Kingsolver asks, and with what consequences, as we hurtle toward the abyss in these times of epic planetary transformation? And make no mistake about it, the stakes are that high. Postapocalyptic times, and their singular preoccupation with survival, look easy compared with this journey to the end game. Yet we must also deal with the pinching boots of everyday life. [...] One of the gifts of a Kingsolver novel is the resplendence of her prose. She takes palpable pleasure in the craft of writing, creating images that stay with the reader long after her story is done". [8]
The monarch butterfly or simply monarch is a milkweed butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. Other common names, depending on region, include milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, and black-veined brown. It is amongst the most familiar of North American butterflies and an iconic pollinator, although it is not an especially effective pollinator of milkweeds. Its wings feature an easily recognizable black, orange, and white pattern, with a wingspan of 8.9–10.2 cm (3.5–4.0 in). A Müllerian mimic, the viceroy butterfly, is similar in color and pattern, but is markedly smaller and has an extra black stripe across each hindwing.
Barbara Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
The Poisonwood Bible (1998), by Barbara Kingsolver, is a best-selling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River.
State of Fear is a 2004 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, his fourteenth under his own name and twenty-fourth overall, in which eco-terrorists plot mass murder to publicize the danger of global warming. Despite being a work of fiction, the book contains many graphs and footnotes, two appendices, and a 20-page bibliography in support of Crichton's beliefs about global warming. Climate scientists, science journalists, environmental groups, and science advocacy organizations have disputed the views presented in the book.
The Bean Trees is the first novel by American writer Barbara Kingsolver. It was published in 1988 and reissued in 1998. The novel is followed by the sequel Pigs in Heaven.
My Ántonia is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, which is considered one of her best works.
Pigs in Heaven (ISBN 9780060168018) is a 1993 novel by Barbara Kingsolver; it is the sequel to her first novel, The Bean Trees. It continues the story of Taylor Greer and Turtle, her adopted Cherokee daughter. It highlights the strong relationships between mothers and daughters, with special attention given to the customs, history, and present living situation of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. It is Kingsolver's first book to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Animal Dreams is a 1990 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. A woman named Cosima "Codi" Noline returns to her hometown of Grace, Arizona to help her aging father, who is slowly losing his struggle with Alzheimer's disease. She takes a biology teacher position at the local high school and lives with her old high school friend, Emelina. Animal Dreams features Kingsolver's trademark—alternating perspectives throughout the novel. Most chapters are told from the perspective of Codi, while others are told from her father, Homer's, perspective. The book was dedicated to Ben Linder, who was killed by the Contras on April 28, 1987.
The Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC), formerly The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, was an industry-funded lobby group and crisis management vehicle, and was created in 1993 by Phillip Morris and APCO in response to a 1992 United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report which identified secondhand smoke as a "confirmed" human carcinogen. TASSC's stated objectives were to (1) discredit the EPA report; (2) fight anti-smoking legislation; and (3) pro-actively pass legislation favourable to the tobacco industry.
Insect migration is the seasonal movement of insects, particularly those by species of dragonflies, beetles, butterflies and moths. The distance can vary with species and in most cases, these movements involve large numbers of individuals. In some cases, the individuals that migrate in one direction may not return and the next generation may instead migrate in the opposite direction. This is a significant difference from bird migration.
Prodigal Summer (2000) is the fifth novel by American author Barbara Kingsolver. Heavily emphasizing ecological themes and her trademark interweaving plots, this novel tells three stories of love, loss and connections in rural Virginia.
Many populations of Lepidoptera migrate, sometimes long distances, to and from areas which are only suitable for part of the year. Lepidopterans migrate on all continents except Antarctica, including from or within subtropical and tropical areas. By migrating, these species can avoid unfavorable circumstances, including weather, food shortage, or over-population. In some lepidopteran species, all individuals migrate; in others, only some migrate.
Small Wonder is a collection of 23 essays on environmentalism and social justice by American novelist and biologist Barbara Kingsolver, published in 2002 by HarperCollins. It reached number 3 in the New York Times non-fiction paperback best seller list in May 2003. The cover shows two scarlet macaws, the subject of one of the essays, in flight against a tropical forest.
Climate fiction is literature that deals with climate change. Generally speculative in nature but inspired by climate science, works may take place in the world as we know it, in the near future or in fictional worlds experiencing climate change. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. The genre typically focuses on anthropogenic climate change and other environmental issues as opposed to weather and disaster more generally. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a 2013 novel by the American writer Karen Joy Fowler. The novel won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was also short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
Lincoln Pierson Brower was an American entomologist and ecologist, known for his work on monarch butterflies, chemical ecology and conservation.
Unsheltered is a 2018 novel by Barbara Kingsolver published by HarperCollins. It follows two families living in the same house at two separate time periods in Vineland, New Jersey. The novel alternates between the 21st century and the 19th century, using the last words of one chapter as the title of the next one. One family lived in the house in the 1800s and the other family resides in the house in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Elizabeth Hargrave is an American game designer. She has designed several games, including Wingspan, which won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres for best connoisseur game of the year, Tussie-Mussie and Mariposas.
Lauren B. Buckley is an evolutionary ecologist and professor of biology at the University of Washington. She researches the relationship between organismal physiological and life history features and response to global climate change.
Demon Copperhead is a 2022 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Kingsolver was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield. While Kingsolver's novel is similarly about a boy who experiences poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues.
