Ursula K Le Guin

Blaze of Glory

Flight Behaviour

By

Faber & Faber 436pp £18.99 order from our bookshop

Some of the finest American novels were written at least partly in the hope of effecting moral change. From Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom’s Cabin through The Grapes of Wrath and beyond runs a clear, explicit and brilliant arc of concern with poverty and social injustice. Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour is a worthy new member of that company, its concerns embodied in the vivid characters of a novel written with passion and intelligence. What is new is that her scathingly accurate depictions of societal imbalance are closely interwoven with urgent concern about environmental imbalance – the ongoing catastrophe that no serious writer will be allowed to ignore much longer. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • He weeps by the side of the ocean, He weeps on the top of the hill; He purchases pancakes and lotion, And chocolate… ,
    • 'Half-way through The Conquest of Water I felt as if I had been subjected to the literary equivalent of excessive c… ,
    • 'Volume five, then, but still no end in sight. Sandbrook is clearly enjoying himself so much he can’t bear the seri… ,
    • 'By the end of the book something so weighty, stylish and impressive has been built up that one feels far nearer to… ,
    • 'Her ensuing psychotic episode is described so convincingly ... that the reader will wonder if Dobrakovová did not… ,
    • 'The perspectives complement and contest one another, amounting to a glorious, atmospheric set of ventriloquisms.'… ,
    • RT : I reviewed The Testaments for . I will not be taking any questions at this time. ,
    Follow Us