Five For Five

I realized soon after finishing "Flight Behavior" (2012) that Barbara Kingsolver had now entered a rarefied realm among my favorite authors. I don't recall another writer ever knocking me out five times consecutively. At present, her closest competitor is Colm Toibin ("Brooklyn", etc.) who has recently gone four for four. Which author has thrilled you that consistently, at least among the books you've chosen?

Is it Kingsolver's prose? The richness and variety of her ideas? Her complex but wholly human characters? Yes, yes, and yes. Are Kingsolver's narrative lines compelling? Is her writing audacious? Does her work contribute to the novel as an art form? Affirmative in triplicate. If Kingsolver has a glaring weakness as a writer, I haven't yet detected it. Since my first exposure to her via "Poisonwood Bible" (1998) - still my favorite - she has thrilled and educated me in nearly equal measure.

How often does an author get you thinking about your own thinking? Kingsolver's deft exploration of the gap between coastal elite snobbery (with their "... smart mouthed comedians …" ) and rural provincialism (with their " … pastors, Dear Abby, and local talk radio …") in "Flight Behavior" - and the way that gap shows up in the acrimonious debate over climate change - stopped me cold. I re-read that passage - about a third of the way through the book - at least four times. Then I digressed, composed a long list of contemporary issues - immigration, guns, abortion, etc. - and thought about how I'd arrived at my opinions for those issues. How successful have I been filtering the chatter of those "...smart mouthed comedians..." while trying to develop my own views?  How successful are you? Folks on the other side: How successful are you filtering out the "...pastors, Dear Abby, and  local talk radio …"?

This kind of provocative writing - and the attendant introspection it can engender - is surely not for everyone. But if a novel doesn't educate or elevate me, it doesn't matter if I've been entertained.