Probably the way a lot of us were brought up in the 1970s.Flight Behavior her esteemed novel is a clear cut example of her extreme concern for the natural world. Dellarobia is exceptionally environmentally friendly because she doesn’t have the money to do otherwise. If we are rich enough to buy take away coffee, we can carry a reusable mug. The conversations Dellarobia has with a climate change campaigner are my favourite passages and they’ve stayed with me ever since. It’s also a look at climate change through the eyes of those not able to make the decisions wealthy people make.
I read it when my children were young and felt that distance she feels from her childless (free) friend. The relationships are fascinating to follow. It opens with Dellarobia hiking through the forest to meet a new lover when she discovers the butterflies. This makes it sound rather tedious but honestly it’s excellent. It’s the story of Dellarobia and her young family in the Appalachians and the impact of monarch butterflies choosing to migrate to their valley. ‘Flight Behaviour’ was another novel I found in the depths of my Kindle and another that I first read in 2013.
The book spans 90 years but I didn’t feel a sense of ‘churn’, just real connection to the characters and I highly recommend it. The horrific poverty of the depression, the resultant internal displacement in America and how families continued to live their lives in those conditions is brilliantly depicted. I love the idea of imagining what might have happened behind the image ‘Migrant Mother’ that many of us are familiar with. The book is a fictionalised account of the subject and the photographer and I loved it.
‘Mary Coin’ was published in 2013 and is a look at the iconic Depression Era photograph that is used on the cover. Anyway, I then spent a happy half hour browsing through books on the Kindle, so more from that source to come. The opposite problem applies to Patrick – I think he’s reading something improving and actually he’s reading some daft book from when he was nine. I assumed that I’d lent it to someone and decided to buy it on Kindle, then discovered that I already owned it! I love my Kindle because I’m lazy, disorganised and it’s not always possible to get the books I want quickly but it does mean that I forget about books I’ve read and don’t reread things as much as I’d like to. We still have no system on our bookshelves but it definitely wasn’t there. Something reminded me of the brilliant Marissa Silver novel ‘Mary Coin’ this week, so I went off to find it.
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