Migrations

Oh man, Migrations is a brutal and beautiful novel. Charlotte McConaghy has crafted a story that is at once about climate change and how we are destroying the planet but also about one woman’s self-destruction.  Migrations is the story of Franny Stone, an Irish-Australian woman who wants to track the last flight of the Arctic terns — birds who migrate from the North Pole to Antarctica. She somehow ends up on a fishing ship with a motley crew led by the eccentric captain, Ennis, and they follow the birds south. Throughout, there are flashbacks to Franny’s life with her husband, Niall, an ornithologist, and hints that something very dark and awful has happened to Franny — she is clearly a woman on the brink. 

As Ellen Morton writes in The Washington Post, “Franny has an irresistible gravitational pull. The mystery of her bleak grief draws you in. Her affinity for the natural world, especially birds, is nearly mythical. She seems heroically strong, but within her first-person narrative, we see she feels just as human and as helpless as the rest of us.”

Migrations is a finely crafted narrative that strings you along until the final moments.

Rating: ★★★★