I'm going back to my roots from now on.

Yet again I have fallen to the media hype of disappointing books. I am going back to what I know best from now on and that is obscure titles and classics. So the newest fail was a book by Barbara Kingsolver entitled "Flight Behavior". This book is very popular and I read about it on many different sites and thought I'd try it. I'm pissed I wasted my time. There was nothing inherently wrong about it other than it was so boring I thought my eyes were going to fall out onto the pages while I was reading it. I am really not sure if it is because I cannot relate to this book at all or if it's because I found no deeper purpose in it. If a book does not necessarily shadow my lifestyle I can still appreciate it and try to learn from it but this one left me really hanging.
 
The story is about Dellarobia, wife of Cub, daughter in law of Bear and Hester. They are sheep farmers from Tennessee who live a down home, simple, poor existence. They have two children, Preston and Cordelia who in all respects are great kids. The story opens on Dellarobia running away into the woods to take actions that would ruin her marriage and disrupt everything about the life she has. What she stumbles upon is an ecological phenomena, a migration of monarch butterflies that is so overwhelming and massive that it makes it seem as though the forest is on fire. She tells her family and friends about it and it becomes a small town news story hailed as an act of God that brought this majesty to their little section of the world. With all the attention comes an exotic scientist, Ovid Byron and his research team who are looking to understand why the butterflies have come here and how they came to be.
 
Dellarobia, we learn married Cub during high school out of need to avoid small town embarrassment over being pregnant. We see this type of thing on MTV all the time now it seems. The story centers on her feelings of entrapment and a life unfilled, one in which she did not choose. I think a lot of people in their own way have these feelings at one time or another and for any number of reasons but in this case it is the domestic partnership with a man she doesn't respect and only chooses to love out of obligation. The story continues down both plot points of the marriage and interpersonal struggle and the interesting ecological plight of the monarch butterflies. If you have no basic interest in nature than the story will fall completely flat for you.
 
I just did not like this book. I didn't connect with the characters or her plight, I found her hard to like and I don't care particularly much for the environmental side of it. The social dynamics were okay, the characters were entertaining enough but it just did not work for me. I think I need to re commit to staying away from press releases and 'recommendations', they are just not my thing. This book may be the hit for middle aged women in loveless marriages but not for a young 20 something who see the world ahead.
 
2 out of 5.