By Barbara Kingsolver, 2012
Didactic though it is, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The characters are empathetic portrayals of real personalities, struggling to find their way through a contemporary crisis. The writing is a lyrical and descriptive evocation of a beautiful setting that I don’t know. The plot has enough humour and satire to be lively and engaging. The fact that it all moves in line with a big theme that Kingsolver wants to illustrate is just fine with me, since I agree with her message.
The extended metaphor of the butterfly colony’s displacement
due to climate change is quite wonderful. First, the mysterious beauty of the colony
is an inspiring image. It sparks my imagination to visualize the beauty of the scenes
that Kingsolver describes, and beyond that, the beauty of the whole natural
world. It makes me want to be there just to experience it. Equally, it fills
the characters with a sense of wonder and a desire to protect the butterfly
phenomenon. At the same time, it evokes a sense of dread in thinking that the
phenomenon is already an aberration from the natural cycles, and it may be
destroyed in the changed environment. Kingsolver effectively uses the metaphor
to illustrate both the fragility of the cycles that we live with and depend on,
and also the strength of the natural world. Life on Earth will carry on in one
form or another, either with us or without.
The lead character, Dellarobia, takes readers through this
range of stories and emotions. She is conflicted about her life. Initially she
wants a dramatic change, but she doesn’t want to harm her family. Her life does
change as she gains a view broader than the mountain valley she lives in and as
she becomes exposed to science and education. That sounds a bit stark, but
Kingsolver shows it as a natural progression for an intelligent and curious
woman. Dellarobia was smart in high school and intended to go to college, but
she got stuck in a marriage and a closed environment. When something beautiful
and stimulating comes to her – an apparent result of climate change – of course
she’s going to respond. The question for her is how she will resolve the conflict
between staying with the family she loves and the external stimulation that she
needs. I think this is a question that most of us face in some form, perhaps
particularly women and people in isolated communities.
One intriguing aspect of this novel is the way that
Kingsolver gets beyond the common one-dimensional image of rural Americans. Dellarobia
despises the small-mindedness of her relatives and neighbours, but she finds
that they all have unexpected sides to them. Her husband doesn’t really
understand what she wants, but he loves her and he’s not a macho cowboy either.
Even her judgemental mother-in-law has surprisingly warm aspects to her and a history
of her own. In an iconoclastic picture of her rural megachurch pastor, he turns
out to be one of the most liberal and supportive people around her. (I loved
the description of the church with its bar-like men’s lounge and the drop-off
childcare.) In its way, this novel offers a more complex and, I hope, realistic
picture of a rural American community than any other that I’ve seen.
As one would expect, the interesting characters in this book
are the women. Dellarobia discovers that the other women have complex inner lives
and they respond to their world with strength and creativity within the limits
that their circumstances allow. The men seem much more passive. Things happen
and they try to cope, usually by doing what they have always done. When faced
with something totally new, they have no clue and the women figure out how to react.
