Terrible things are happening ecologically in this new drought-addled world. The butterflies, on the other hand, like the unrelenting summer rain, do not quite square with life as we know it now.

Dellarobia's domestic gloom and gradual enlightenment make a beguiling tale, with some exquisite set pieces such as a marital meltdown in the dollar store, and the sublimely subversive idea of decorating a Christmas tree with money. The butterflies disrupt her plans, and subsequently she mingles with well-heeled butterfly newcomers, navigates the established treacheries of Feathertown, and tentatively probes the reasons for her own discontent. She is not fully aware at the beginning of the book why she is so dissatisfied with her marriage she is simply ready to wreck it. The butterflies are discovered by a married mother-of-two named Dellarobia Turnbow, who is en route to a tryst with a young man. Tourists, entomologists, and activists congregate nearby.īarbara Kingsolver's previous books include The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna.

But they are unlikely to survive Appalachian snow - catastrophic population loss is certain, and extinction likely. They have been displaced from their historic wintering site in Mexico by environmental degradation and climate change. The book's central premise is that millions of monarch butterflies appear on a mountainside in eastern Tennessee.

In Barbara Kingsolver's seventh novel Flight Behavior, climate change delivers antithetical weather to eastern Tennessee - such that 'the neighbors' tomato crop had melted to liquid stench on the vine under the summer's nonstop rains, and their orchard grew a gray, fungal caul that was smothering the fruit and trees together.' The novel is set in a year in the near future in which 'the very snapping turtles had dragged themselves from silted ponds and roamed the soggy land looking for higher ground.' That verb 'roam' tempted this reader to picture the turtles on horseback, but that is a minor infelicity in a novel of great scope. The mercury hit 100 for ten consecutive days in some places last summer, and the drought of 2012 may be a preview of what climate change will bring: amber waves of extremely short corn. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Flight Behavior Author Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver