The Flitting: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Butterflies

Masters (Noughties) takes up lepidoptery to connect with his dying father in this affecting blend of memoir and literary criticism. After his nature-loving father received a terminal cancer diagnosis on the eve of the U.K.’s 2020 Covid lockdown, Masters was determined to be his dad’s link to the outside world. He began texting his father snaps of butterflies he encountered during walks in the park, growing intrigued by the creatures’ sublime beauty and sheepish about his adolescent dismissal of his father’s fondness for the natural world. With his father’s help, Masters began to recognize previously indistinguishable specimens, tracing, for example, the subtle differences between the Small White, the Large White, the Green-veined White, and Orange Tip (“I figure the whites as the John, Paul, George, and Ringo of the British butterfly kingdom”). Searches for elusive specimens take on poignant significance, stirring in Masters an “aching nostalgia for a future that Dad and I will not share.” In between chapters of personal reflection, Masters documents famous literary encounters with butterflies, including Virginia Woolf’s frequent use of the insect as a metaphor for fluid identities and Vladimir Nabokov’s contributions to the field of lepidoptery. While these analyses are plenty stimulating, it’s Masters’s heartfelt account of building bridges with his father that lands hardest. This is sure to tug on readers’ heartstrings. Agent: Jessica Wollard, David Higham Assoc. (Oct.)