by Anne van Oorschot, AWC The Hague, Environment Team Co-Chair
3rd Global Issues Book Discussion: ENVIRONMENT
After the recent Zoom discussion session for Among the Maasai (the Education Team’s pick for the second in the series of Global Issues Book Discussions), the Environment Team would like to suggest the third book. While non-fiction books about environmental issues abound, we wanted a novel that would not only inform about an environmental issue, but be an interesting and well-written story as well… and we found the perfect book! Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy, Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world.
Flight Behaviour – by Barbara Kingsolver
Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment, but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urban journalists, opportunists, sightseers and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.
Flight Behaviour transfixes from its opening scene, when a young woman’s narrow experience of life is thrown wide with the force of a raging fire. In the lyrical language of her native Appalachia, Barbara Kingsolver bares the rich, tarnished humanity of her novel’s inhabitants and unearths the modern complexities of rural existence. Characters and readers alike are quickly carried beyond familiar territory here, into the unsettled ground of science, faith and everyday truces between reason and conviction.
The date for our online discussion is November 18 starting at 7:00 pm CET. We hope you will read the book and plan to join us for an interesting discussion!
The Environment Team
