Migrations

McConaghy, Charlotte. Migrations. New York : Flatiron 2020. Print.

First Sentences:

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

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

 

An Unsung Hero

Smith, Michael. An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Arctic Survivor New York : Gill Books, 2000. Print.

First Sentences:

Thomas Crean was born on 20 July 1877 at Gurtachrane, a remote farming area a short distance to the west of the village of Anascaul on the Dingle Peninsula, in Ireland's County Kerry....The Contrast with the hostile, frozen Antarctic Continent where Crean would carve a remarkable career could hardly be more stark.

Description:

I've always been drawn to non-fiction memoirs, biographies, and re-tellings of explorations, adventures, resourcefulness, and survival under difficult conditions. How do these people overcome the obstacles they face daily? Where do they get the strength and will to press on? Sometimes I even wonder how I would have fared should I have been alongside these brave people (No question here, I would have done poorly and given up at a very early stage).

 

Thomas Crean is not a man who gave up. While his name is not familiar to most of us, I was given his biography by friends who visited a museum in Ireland dedicated to his exploits. He was a survivor, a conqueror of more than a few death-defying situations, and someone truly respected by the great Arctic explorers of his time, enough so that they requested him accompany them on several dangerous expeditions to that unknown world.

 

Thomas Crean was a shipmate with Ernest Shackleton on Robert Falcon Scott's ambitious  voyage to explore for the first time Antarctica, an "unknown and hostile territory." This was to be a hugely dangerous but prestigious and widely popular undertaking.

The Discovery expedition to one of the world's last unconquered spots had aroused huge interest in the English-speaking world. It was regarded by many as something of a virility symbol for Britain at a time when the Victorian age had finally drawn to a close, and the Empire was under severe strain in places like South Africa and Ireland.

Thomas Crean, an Irish seaman assigned to another ship helping to outfit Scott's Discovery for the expedition, was chosen to replace a discharged Discovery crew member at the last minute and thus gained a spot on the voyage and an introduction to the Antarctic. Although Crean proved popular with mates and officers alike, it was Scott himself who doomed the voyage.

[Scott] determined that the expedition would use traditional British methods of traveling, which meant man-hauling sledges across the ice, rather than the more suitable dogs and skis. Dogs were quicker, hard working and at worst, could be eaten by the other dogs or the explorers themselves.

Once in Antarctica, instead of dropping off a small group of men to explore and map local areas while the Discovery wintered safely in New Zealand, Scott chose that everyone would spend the winter safely iced up in -40 degree weather for nine months to await the "warmer" season when exploration was possible. Thus Crean and his shipmates were introduced to the cold, inhospitable land, making forays over the ice on day trips, hauling massive sleds with supplies by their own strength after their Siberian horses proved unable to walk, much less pull sleds over broken ice fields. The horses quickly died and were eaten.

Man-haulers during this era were plagued by the intense, cold, frostbite, blizzards, hurricane-force winds, snow blindness, life-threatening-crevasses and one final indignity -- they were always thirsty and hungry....The British...took special pride in the ability to cope with hardship, the test of real men pitted against the worst the elements could throw at them. ...They gloried in the hardship and seemed unable or unwilling to adapt to more modern, less arduous methods of travel, such as dogs and skis.

Crean became one of the best of these man-haulers, never weakening in his responsibility to not let his piece of harness go slack, and encouraged other haulers to keep them going and alive. They covered an average of only 6-12 back-breaking miles a day. Roland Amundsen, a rival explorer also trying to be the first to reach the South Pole at the same time, was familiar with travel on ice. He studied the natives in Norway and, using their proven methods with dogs and skis, and was able to cover 60 miles a day without men hauling the sleds. Guess which man made it to the Pole first and which one died on the cross-continent trip back?

Crean survived this ill-fated voyage and undertook two other Arctic trips with Ernest Shackelton, including the famous disastrous trip where Shackelton, Crean and crew were so badly iced in that their ship, the Endurance, broke up into pieces. Some of the men, including Crean, were forced to haul boats miles over the ice to the open sea and then try to row hundreds of miles without instruments to seek help for the men left behind.

Crean also, when a fellow crewmate was disabled on an multi-day exploratory trek, volunteered to go get help by jumping on floating ice floes to work his way back to their base camp. He even survived falling into a deep crevasse, using only his physical strength and willpower, an incredible feat.

Adventure after hair-raising encounter with challenges, death and despair fill the pages of An Unsung Hero, forcing readers to marvel at Crean's perseverance, strength, and positive attitude. It's a detailed examination of the outdated British methods of exploration and unqualified leaders and crew, life of men stuck on a ship for months of sunless cold, as well as the personal triumphs for those who flourished when facing hardships.

It's a page-turner of a story of an extraordinary man and his survival in the last glorious age of exploration where the world breathlessly followed the progress of brave men, hailed their triumphs, and mourned their defeats. And Tom Crean was in the middle of it all, and survived to tell of these exploits and the men who endured them. Highly recommended, of course.

  

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Classic, minutely-detailed, and gripping account of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated adventure to cross the Antarctic. One of his most trusted crew members was Thomas Crean, chronicled in the above book.

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.] 

Cold People

Smith, Tom Rob. Cold People. New York: Scribner 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

Looking up at the night sky Ui saw only unfamiliar stars. 

These weren't the constellations that guided him between the Polynesian islands of his homeland, these were stars from the sky's outer edge, the stars his people had never bothered to name since they were no use to navigate by, dismissed at the "petuu vare" - foolish stars.

Description:

When a huge number of alien spaceships suddenly appear in the morning sky, a strange message plays on every electronic device in the world, plugged in or not: "People have thirty days to reach the continent of Antarctica." Nothing else. No reason why. No consequences revealed. Just that simple ominous message.

So starts the brilliant, challenging Cold People by Tom Rob Smith. The first contact with another species leads to a hurried mass migration of the world's people to the frozen south. Military boats, planes, oil tankers, and anything else that flies or floats is re-outfitted to carry as many passengers as possible, but of course they are insufficient in capacity to transport every person on Earth.

Those who somehow do reach Antarctica must create a completely new world when their old one is destroyed. No nations, no electronics, no internet, no money, everyone equal. These early challenges are only briefly addressed as author Smith quickly takes the story twenty years into the future after the aliens' arrival. And by then things have definitely changed for the people still alive in Antarctica.

By the end of the first year, it was apparent that humankind wouldn't survive unless it unified. Old notions of sovereignty were a luxury it could no longer afford. 

Realizing that humans are frail and completely unsuited to continuing in this bitter cold environment, much less expanding their population, the scientists among them create the "Cold People" project. They begin altering genetic material to produce "ice-adapted" humans who will be able to tolerate and thrive under icy conditions far beyond what current people could ever hope to achieve.

But there are questionable outcomes to this genetic experimentation, both ethical and dangerous, and the fate of the Antarctic  communities and mankind in general rest in the mysterious creations produced in the experimental labs.

This is a story of survival to be sure. But it is also presents thoughtful scenario where families, love, relationships, and ethics all must be reexamined to face and hopefully succeed in a challenging present and highly-uncertain future. I feel the unexpected directions taken by highly unusual characters in unique situations make this a strong narrative that will capture the attention and encourage philosophical and ethical questions in the minds of most readers.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Stephenson, Neil. Seveneves.   

When the moon explodes on the very first page of this novel, humankind must work together to construct a method to somehow preserve mankind and the knowledge of the ages before Earth eventually is destroyed. Riveting.  (previously reviewed here)