Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy | Expected publication: August 4th 2020 by Flatiron Books | 272 pages | Goodreads
✅ REVIEW
“A life’s impact can be measured by what it gives and what it leaves behind, but it can also be measured by what it steals from the world”
This was an introspective and engaging novel. The story starts with Franny Stone, our main character and narrator, who arrives on Greenland to find the last elusive flock of terns.
It takes place in an earth where most animals have become extinct due to climate changes, specifically global warming. As the novel progresses the story becomes increasingly dark and gradually chilling secrets are revealed.
The author did a great job with the imagery and description, I could clearly picture the setting and emotional state of the characters. At the same time, I felt the story was too gloomy for me, given the current pandemic circumstances and sad events around the globe, it was not easy for me to read.
Overall, the characters and the story were well developed and intriguing, I recommend it.
ARC provided by Netgalley
✅ PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION
For readers of Station Eleven and Flight Behavior, a debut novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds – and her own final chance for redemption.
A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive.
Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his salty, eccentric crew with promises that the birds she is tracking will lead them to fish.
As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s new shipmates begin to realize that the beguiling scientist in their midst is not who she seems. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of letters to her husband, and dead set on following the terns at any cost, Franny is full of dark secrets. When the story of her past begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running toward—and running from.
Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Migrations is a shatteringly beautiful ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened. But at its heart, it is about the lengths we will go, to the very edges of the world, for the people we love.
BOOK SOURCE AND FORMAT
ARC, ebook