Flight Behavior is a luminous novel about fight and flight on different levels. Main character Dellarobia Turnbow discovers that monarch butterflies are over-wintering on her husband’s family’s farm instead of in Mexico as they should. The phenomenon of millions of butterflies draws the curious and also scientists worried about the odd behavior and possible demise of the butterflies. There’s a great scene when scientist Ovid takes a reporter to task about her coverage of climate change. Dellarobia becomes close to Ovid who enlightens her about climate change, scientific method and butterfly behavior. She soaks it up like a sponge and her life changes. At the end, though everything’s changing, there’s hope that Dellarobia and her children’s lives will be better and that somehow, nature will persevere. One of the best novels of 2012.

posted Dec 18, 2012 at 1:42PM

 Add a Comment