TLC Book Tours: Flight Behavior

I've been engrossed in Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, Flight Behavior. It’s one of those books that sets your mind whirling in all different directions. There are many hearts to this book, many core stories, and one of the most interesting is the story of the monarch butterfly and it’s migratory pattern. (Yes, this really is a novel, but she manages to sneaks a lot of science in there too, rather like the way your mother used to camoflauge vegetables with cheese sauce or buttered bread crumbs.) The way I understand it is that the monarch butterfly migrates north from a warm climate (like Mexico) and then back again, but because a monarch’s lifespan is only about six weeks,  the complete journey is played out over three generations. The mating occurs in Mexico, and the birth of new butterflies a bit farther north, perhaps Texas. These newborns then fly even farther north to avoid extreme summer heat.  But then, if all goes according to plan, come autumn these brand new butterflies make their way back to Mexico.

Where they’ve never, ever been before.

Something in their DNA - remember, this is the DNA of a butterfly we’re talking about here - tells them when to make this journey and where to fly to get back to the warm Mexican forests where their “family” came from.

Today I’ve been thinking about and marveling over the inner signals in that tiny insect. The impulses that set it on its journey, the integrity of a miniscule GPS system that guides it on it’s way. The compulsion it must feel to fly at just the right time.

And the way it honors that compulsion without thinking.

If an insect can be so firmly guided by it’s genetics, I think, then how much more are we, without even being aware of it, guided by the genetic soup that sloshes in our large and cumbersome bodies. How many of our own impulses, behaviors, desires, are governed by the mysterious and ancient forces of DNA?

I suspect many more than we like to believe.

But unlike the insect - or birds or fish or other mammals - humans so often ignore the signals our inner spirit sends out. We persist in doing things that go against our grain, whether it’s work, or relationships, or ways of dealing with people. When life doesn’t feel just right, we tell ourselves to buck up and get over it.

When instead we should heed those prickling thoughts and allow them guide us to where we should be.

But so often we’re afraid.

For a long time before we moved, I had those prickling thoughts. That the place I was living wasn’t where I was supposed to be anymore. For an even longer time, I had been ignoring them, afraid to migrate, to make a dangerous journey away from everything I knew. Now that I’ve made the trip, I realize the decision was right. I feel peaceful, as if I’m where I belong.

The monarch butterflies in Kingsolver’s story have taken a wrong turn in their migration, things have happened which set them off course and changed the natural progression of their lives. This is mirrored in the book by the circumstances of its heroine, Dellarobia Turnbow, an intelligent young woman who was ready to fly from the foothills of rural Appalachia and onto college when she was derailed by her parents’ deaths and an unplanned pregnancy. She has been at odds with her world ever since, though she has done her best to buck up and get on with it. Something inside her has never felt quite right, and until the butterflies arrived on her mountain, she didn’t know what it was.

Those tiny butterflies live without fear and follow the compulsion that sends them forth, even though in this case it could mean complete extinction. I haven’t finished the book, so I don’t know if Dellarobia will heed their example, or how her story will end if she does.

Change is never without price, movement from one place to another is always fraught with a certain amount of danger. But if you can connect with your inner nature, with the primal forces that make you healthy and whole and alive, I have to believe you’re more likely to migrate successfully.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this wonderful novel.

Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver

The Sunday Salon: Mr. Churchill’s Secretary and What’s On the Reading Horizon

You must know by now how much I enjoy historical fiction, so it’s no surprise that I was eager to dive into a new mystery series with a unique historical setting. Mr. Churchill’s Secretary is the first volume featuring the intrepid Maggie Hope, who works as a secretary in Winston Churchill’s war cabinet. Maggie’s skills extend far beyond her expertise in taking Churchill’s dictation on the silent typewriter keyboards he’s had created especially for his staff. Maggie is a gifted mathematician and code-breaker, and these skills are soon discovered and put to very good use.

Like any good historical novel, the period details are just as interesting to me as the plot of the book. Susan Elia MacNeal does a wonderful job of setting the scene and introducing all kinds of information about the period. The behind-the-scenes look at Churchill’s staff  was reminiscent of watching an episode of West Wing on TV. In a recent interview at All Things Girl, MacNeal said she was "completely and totally immersed in World War II history — books, documentaries, talking with Blitz survivors. I even had the honor of corresponding with Mrs. Elisabeth Layton Nel, one of Winston Churchill’s actual wartime secretaries. I also learned how to darn socks, make wartime recopies and sniff vintage perfume; I went to second-hand clothing stores to look at clothes, gloves, and hats. And I was lucky to be able to spend a lot of time in London at the marvelous Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, as well as the Imperial War Museum, Bletchley Park, Chartwell, and, of course, Windsor Castle."

It paid off big time, because Mr. Churchill’s Secretary was a wonderfully drawn portrait of its era. I’m really looking forward to the next book in the series, Princess Elizabeth’s Spy, which is already on my shelf.

But before I see what Maggie’s up to next, I’ll be reading Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple and Don’t Bother Me, I’m Reading, a memoir by Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air series.

What’s on your reading horizon?

PS - A serendipity...Before reading Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, I read the novel Motherland, by Amy Sohn, a witty and interesting novel set in the neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Oddly enough, Susan Elia MacNeal lives in Park Slope, and is acquainted with Amy Sohn. I love stuff like that :)

So This is...Thanksgiving

Despite what retailers and shoppers are trying to tell us, it is not Christmas yet - at least not in my calendar. I have a very firm rule about making no preparations for Christmas until every last shred of turkey leftovers are gone. This autumn in Michigan has been so lovely, with lots of just-right temperatures and sunshine to spotlight the brilliant colors at their best. I hate to give fall up, hate to see it morph into the dreaded cold of winter. For the first time in a decade we have no recourse to escape winter’s chill, and will have to tough out the entire winter here in the midwest.

Nevertheless, we certainly have much to be grateful for this year at chéz Becca- most especially our wonderfully happy, healthy grandson, and his parents who love him to pieces.

We also have a lovely new home and are enjoying making it “ours."

We have family and friends who support us and love us.

We have food on the table every night, hot water to shower, bathe, and wash our clothes.

We have cars and the fuel to make them go.

We have books and music and television shows freely available at any time of day or night.

We have freedom to write, sing, worship however we please.

We have so many choices about how to live our lives.

How lucky we are.

How thankful.

At the Top of the List

Wisdom sometimes comes in very unexpected places. I went in for a haircut late this afternoon and my stylist took one look at me and said, “Hey, are you okay?"

“Oh, I’m just tired,” I said, my stock answer when anyone asks me why I’m not quite up to par.

“It looks like more than that to me,” she said. She is a wise Muslim woman, about my age, with one daughter who is married and living in Texas. We commiserate about the distance between us and our only children. She rejoiced with me at Connor’s birth, and we talk about how much she hopes for grandchildren of her own soon.

“I think I’ve been trying to do too much,” I said. “Moving to the new house and trying to clean up the old house, working on a project for my office job, helping my friend with the community theater project, subbing in other friends bell choirs, doing things for my mom..."

“Bless you, Becca,” she said. “You are just doing too many things for too many people and not enough for yourself."

It’s an old story, and no doubt you’re tired of my complaints about it. But I can never seem to find the right balance between the outside world and my own inner needs. I spend too much time fulfilling obligations and not enough time doing things that are simply fulfilling. In trying to make life easier for others, I end up making life hard for myself.  If I don’t value myself enough to make my life a priority, why should I be surprised that other people don’t value it either?

I have never fully accepted the concept that I’m worthy of care, never given myself permission to put my own needs first. The things I do for me - writing, reading, taking walks, playing music - those always come last, in what little bits of time and energy are left after the work and the chores and the meetings and rehearsals.

Which means that I’m putting myself last in the long line of priorities I call my life in general.

Toady, the end result of that position was obviously written all over my face. My hair stylist could see it. I’ve been seeing it in the mirror every morning - in my dull skin, my limp hair, my sad eyes.

Time to start moving myself up from the bottom of the list. Time to put myself first and stop feeling guilty about it. Time to take time -  to read, to write, to start finding my way in this new place I’m living.

“Be happy, Becca,” my stylist says as we hug goodbye. “God gave you life to live and be happy."

Such wisdom for the price of a haircut.

TLC Tours for The Sunday Salon: Because You Have To: A Writing Life

I’m a writing book junkie. Sometimes, I'm one of those people who loves to read about writing more than I actually love to write. There is a mystique surrounding a writer’s life, especially for those of us who are wannabe’s, who worship at the throne of “real” writers - you know, the ones with actual books that have been printed with paper and ink.

So when TLC Tours offered me the opportunity to read/review Because You Have To: A Writing Life, by Joan Frank, I readily agreed to feed my reading-about-writing habit.

Frank contends that those who are called to write must do so, no matter what the privation. She uses herself as a prime example, discussing the ways she has supported her writing (a published body of work that include two short story collections and three novels) with mostly low-paying office jobs. She talks about co-workers who complain that she is unresponsive when she drifts into a daydream about her latest work. She relates tales of ekeing out moments to write between fielding phone calls and typing letters. “There is never enough,” she titles one of her chapters. Never enough time, money, silence, appreciation.

She talks about the isolation that writers sometimes feel, the need to “build a kind of coherent wholesome scaffolding around the essentially lonely, aberrant, and certainly unjustifiable act of writing.” She advises the writer to “be careful whom you tell,” about your writing, because “Americans tend to feel uneasy when confronted with someone professing to practice art.” She shares some “gruesome stories” about marketing and rejection.

She does not sugar coat the writer’s life, oh no she does not.

But still, this reader can sense on every page how compelled she is to put words to paper, to express ideas, to work out emotions and scenarios and possibilities on the printed page. Frank looks at the writers life -well, frankly - but in a way that makes you still want to be part of that mysterious brotherhood.

She even writes about those writing books I love to love so much.

You can collect dozens of technique books. In the end, writing that has life in it can’t issue from someone else’s formula, like dance steps painted on a plastic mat. Anyone with an instinct for the shape and sound and movement of language must somewhere in her heart recognize this lonely truth, and agree to trust herself to go forward, absorbing the advice that fits along the way, tossing the rest.

Because You Have To: A Writing Life.  Joan Frank tells it like it is in this very personal, sometimes funny, sometimes acerbic, sometimes joyous book about what keeps her coming back to the page.

We write to investigate, attend, witness. When even the biggest literary names make victorious reading tours, they often admit how unhappy they feel until they have settled into the next writing project - how hungrily they miss working on something, amid whatever aclaim. I believe them. The itch, the yearning, the glimpse of the next tantalizing, disturbing idea - how can I broach it, solve the inescapable problems? Where might I take it; more accurately, more excitingly, where might it take me? The call of the dream: getting back to it, getting it down. Product is good, but process, we learn the hard way, it the real tugging star. One following onto the next, a whole sparkling cosmos of them.