Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver has been one of my favorite authors since I read Animal Dreams years ago. I love her writing style and how she uses words, and this novel was no exception. (I actually used two quotes from this book to teach similes in my World Literature class.)

This book is about a young woman, Dellarobia, who has two children and is married to a man that she doesn't really love. On a walk in the woods, she discovers a huge group of monarch butterflies, and she begins a journey of self-discovery. She ends up working with the scientists who come to town once the word gets out about the butterflies. Through this experience, she grows as a person, and her relationship with her husband beings to change.

What I appreciate most about Kingsolver's writing is her ability to use words to make the readers' experience a truly beautiful one. The first time the reader is introduced to the butterflies that Dellarobia sees in the forrest is a great example of Kingsolver's descriptive writing: "The forest blazed with its own internal flame...The flame now appeared to lift from individual treetops in showers of orange sparks, exploding the way a pine log does in a campfire when it's poked. The sparks spiraled upward in swirls like funnel clouds. Twisters of brightness against gray sky...From the tops of the funnels the sparks lifted high and sailed out undirected above the dark forest" (14).

I was very interested to learn that Kingsolver studied biology and was a scientist before she began to write. This aspect of her life tends to come out in her writing. For instance, her main character in Animal Dreams teaches high school science, and her character in this book becomes fascinated with working with and learning about butterflies. While she is a very descriptive writer, she also includes scientific aspects and details in her novels, making her writing realistic and informative while telling a good story at the same time.

If you haven't read any of Kingsolver's novels, you should. She is an amazing writer!