McConaghy, Charlotte. Migrations. New York : Flatiron 2020. Print.
The animals are dying. Soon we will be alone here.
Description:
In the very near future, in Charlotte McConaghy's new fantastically intriguing novel, Migrations, almost all of the world's animals have died. Global warming had effectively killed off the lions, great apes, wolves, insects, and most of the fish and birds.
Eighty percent of all wild animal life has died. They say most of the rest will go in the next decade or two. We'll keep farmed creatures. Those will survive because we must keep our bellies full of their flesh....But the rest? Everything else? What happens when the last of the terns die? Nothing will ever be as brave again.
In this world, Frannie Stone decides to do something bold: follow one of the last flocks of Arctic Terns on their thousand-mile yearly migration south from the Arctic to Antarctic in hopes of learning about their survival methods and possibly give the world some form of hope for preventing further extinctions of birds and other wildlife. An addition, throughout her narration, she slowly begins to examine her own self:
My life has been a migration without a destination, and that in itself is senseless. I leave for no reason, just to be moving, and it breaks my heart a thousand times, a million.
Sounds like a straightforward nature/adventure story, right? But Migrations is far, far more than that. Frannie is a complex, determined narrator, a woman who as a child and later adult has experienced death, abandonment, family relocation, passion, and loneliness. She is a restless wanderer, someone who cannot sit still, constantly walking, exploring nature, observing her world, befriending crows, and most of all becoming one with the ocean and swimming. From the freezing waters of Greenland, sweeping oceans of Australia, and local raging rivers, Frannie is only comfortable surrounded by water, her first love.
I take off my clothes and wade out into the icy water and the pain is immense and also nothing nothing nothing. I lie in the sea and feel more lost than ever, because I'm not meant to be homesick. I'm not meant to long for the things I have always been so desperate to leave. It isn't fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay.
To accomplish her migration mission, she needs to convince a fishing boat captain to divert his boat and crew from their traditional fishing spots to follow terns to the bottom of the world. After putting tracker tags on three of these birds from a local flock in Greenland (possibly the last flock in the world), she sets sail to follow the birds on maybe their last migration. To secure trtansportation, she promised the ship's captain that the birds will lead them to hidden schools of fish which the terns somehow find to feed on their long flight, a welcome treasure to a fishing crew facing dwindling supplies of oceanic fish.
How do they know where to go? Why do they fly so far? Why are they the last, why these ones, what makes them luckier than the others? I don't know the answers....It's simply remembering what it feel like to love creatures that aren't human. A nameless sadness, the fading away of the birds. The fading away of the animals. How lonely it will be here, when it's just us.
But what separates this book is the characters depicted, their unique personalities, strengths, weaknesses, hopes, and fears. Frannie, of course, is the laser-focused driving force. But she faces a ship's crew which is less accepting of their new shipmate and unknown route that follows three blinking trackers on birds.
We randomly learn about Frannie's scientist husband, the inspiration behind this migration-tracking project, and a major player in Frannie's past life. There are also vague hints dropped by Frannie's thoughts throughout about a double murder, a suicide, broken families, prison, and a deep love that raises this novel to new heights that grip readers totally from the first page right to the end.
The truth is a wound I cannot speak.
McConaghy's style is to jump from one era to another, then back to the current story. Each era reveals new tidbits of information of Frannie's life, family, surroundings, and mindset. While this may sound disconcerting, it is an interesting challenge to try to put these disparate pieces together and understand their influence on Frannie's current passion, fears, and commitment to the importance of her project.
This book gets my highest recommendation. I didn't know much about it when I picked it up from the library and read the first paragraphs. But rather than shelving it on my TBR pile, I simply could not put it down. I found a chair and immediately abandoned the book I was deeply absorbed in to continue reading more about the intriguing Frannie and follow her unique adventure. It is one of the most captivating books I have ever read. It fulfills in spades my criteria of the highest writing style, characters, plot, and setting. All are first rate, the best.
I highly encourage to read Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy, my new favorite book and author. Highest recommendation, of course.
[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]
Smith, Tom Rob. Cold People
The people of Earth are given a mysterious warning (from unseen aliens?): the end of mankind's life as you know is will come to an end within days. All people must leave their lives immediately and go live in Antarctica or be destroyed. The novel focuses on several people's journeys and later existance in the cold. All the time they do now know who gave these orders and what has happened to their other homes. Fantastic. (Previously reviewed here.)
Happy reading.
Fred
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