Migrations A Novel

beautiful and i can never read it again

“Saving specific animals purely on the basis of what they offer humanity may be practical, but wasn’t this attitude the problem to begin with? Our overwhelming, annihilating selfishness?”

The only true negative I've found in either of Charlotte's works is that they are both huge blows to my emotional well-being.

Charlotte is an expert at compelling, flawed character creation and at making me call my therapist back. I spent the entirety of this novel blown away by her expressive prose and unique plot. This novel is a deep-dive into the trauma of grief and the guilt that comes from being that one left standing.

No one does eco-literature like Charlotte does eco-literature. If you wanna cry about our disappearing Mother Nature and the plight of all her children, please read this.

The profound exploration of what we owe nature and ourselves more than make up for moments of melodrama and a protagonist that tested my patience. It's meditative and atmospheric, yet maintains a quick pace, wasting no pages.

a beautiful and tender exploration of a woman's grief set against the backdrop of a planet going through the perils of climate change. the biggest takeaway for me was the magnitude of human error, our inability to deal with our traumas and care for one another set against the desire to care for wildlife and the environment, the eagerness to admit to the flaws of human nature and how we are fundamentally a destructive species. it seems almost ironic that Franny feels this responsibility to care for the state of the world when she is unable to deal with her own weaknesses, but its what makes her complex and someone you would want to understand.

I had to really pace myself or I would have finished this in one sitting and I knew it would be too good to rush. I still devoured it. Everything McConaghy writes is so hauntingly beautiful and poignant in an era of climate demise and the slow loss of the natural world as we know it. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long, long time.

My life has been a migration without a destination, and that in itself is senseless. Meh. This book has a lot of potentials. Still, the main character is very irritating (Franny can u go to therapy pls), the flashbacks are very confusing (12 years ago?, 6 years ago?, 4 years ago?), and the lack of worldbuilding is disappointing (THIS!!, like how can u pick environmental destruction as the main theme if you didn't give us a relevant piece of background information or anything?). Overall, meh.

Was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I loved the structure of this novel. And it broke my heart.

This book started out as a random choice (chose it because of its cover, and I find myself doing that often) but I am so glad and surprised at the resonance I have with its characters and it’s themes. Such a perfectly melded story between preserving nature and adventure but also finding the words for how love works and the difficulty of navigating relationships. It’s really an eye opening insight into a world without animals and also into humanity. Just the rawness of the scenery and the emotions that Franny felt, combined with the mystery and tension that built up towards the end— it all culminates into a peacefully exhilarating masterpiece. I am so happy for Franny, not because of all the good things that happened to her, but also the bad things; and of course, the Arctic terns.

beautiful writing

“the current creature I am just wants quiet. Only quiet is a different beast when it finds you. A perfect kind of thing until you have it and it turns on you.” devastating. the quality of the writing is breathtaking; frm describing the sea to the protagonist’s intensity emotions, every word feels deliberate and flows seamlessly. there’s a tension that stretches through the book, a dark undertone which creates a suspense that pulls me through the novel. it’s incredible how the author connects nature to humans; both mirroring one another & vastly different. one of the rare books which manages to successfully weave in present day/past narrative. a sort of frankensteinian quality at some point (re: expedition to antartica & the vague monstrosity in humans) but ends with a rather poignant, almost hopeful note. it’s a novel that speaks to the soul, i think. to me it plays notes of a longing, a wildness, for some kind of expanse, within and beyond. “I feel that deep and terrible binding for what it is, I know its face and its name, and it’s not a binding at all, but love, and maybe that’s the same kind of thing after all.” (this book has raised all my standards for fiction now & i must thank/curse genevieve)

This one will stick with me for a while, the writing was beautiful.

Absolutely loved this book. It is a relatively quick read as it is only about 250 pages. I thought the prose in this was incredible and our main character was very thought out and real. This really hit me as it delves into discussions around climate change and mass level extinctions. It felt real and raw and brought tears to my eyes.

Devastating.

Reminds me of Station Eleven by Emily st.John Mendel. It touches my heart deeper than I thought it would. I need some time to dissect and digest my thoughts and feelings about this one. Beautifully written. Full review soon.

haunting how this book could be a non fiction matter in a matter of years, but for now — a joy to read; perfect combination of beautiful writing + easy reading. guilt, grief, love, hatred, you feel it all alongside the characters. favourite book of 2022 :) ennis my beloved <3

New favorite book of 2022, oh my GOD! I had high hopes for this read and it did not disappoint. The characters in this book were so real and relatable. I love that it jumped to different points in Franny’s life. The mystery aspect was good, but the overarching message to readers that we need to fix climate change? Amazing. I’ve never read a book like this but I loved it, and I can’t wait to read “Once There We’re Wolves,” because obviously I bought that one, too.

Started off loving this book and thinking it’d be a five-star read if it kept up, but the conversations around humanity’s impact on climate change and animal extinction were a bit one-dimensional for me. Nonetheless it had some truly beautiful themes and writing.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher (Flatiron Books) and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Migrations is a beautiful, heartbreaking, defiant literary fiction debut. While McConaghy has written SFF in the past, this work is something entirely new for her, and you could feel the passion and anger pouring off of every page. I’ve never read any of her SFF novels, but I might have to give them a go. Because the woman can really write. “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 is the story of a dying world, a near future where almost every wild animal has become extinct due to climate change and human interference at a catastrophic level. Franny Stone is bound and determined to follow what she believes will be the last mass migration of Arctic terns, even if it kills her. As the story progresses, and we learn more and more about what is driving her, Franny becomes more and more fascinating and sympathetic. The character development here was very well done, both in Franny and in the supporting cast. There were mystery elements I found intriguing. The prose was lovely. While the story often came across as preachy, the timeliness of it justifies McConaghy’s stance and vehemence. I picked up this book right before Hurricane Laura hit my home in Louisiana. The storm was the worst in this area since 1856. A tree fell on my grandparents’ house as we looked on helplessly, unable to get to them because of the winds and unable to call them because all cell towers were down. My parents’ house, the home they’ve been building since before I was born, the home I spent my entire childhood in from birth to marriage, had a giant tree fall through it while we were inside and is looking like it’s beyond saving. I’m incredibly thankful that every member of my family made it through not only alive but unharmed. However, our lives here are forever changed. Reading a story in which environmental issues were so tightly wound proved to be too much for me at the time. I did eventually pick it back up and finish it, but it was the opposite of a comfort. However, that was the author’s point, I think. McConaghy wasn’t trying to comfort, but to slap awake and call to arms before it’s too late. If that was her intent, she succeeded. You can find this review and more at Novel Notions.

This is staggeringly good. It is pretty genius climate fiction, drawing a clear narrative and thematic parallel between nature and Franny herself. She believes herself a damaged creature as she feels the edges of cage in every place she’s ever been. While we struggle to understand her via the consequences of her actions before cause, the structure of the novel jumps around in time and place, coming together masterfully. It’s actually difficult to talk about why I liked this because I liked everything about it! The prose are something akin to A River Runs Through It, the structure is utilized to great effect. The theme and character are so intertwined yet so effective and simple it made think that this is the cli-fi we need to wake up people to environmental problems we face. This idea that people are somehow divorced and above nature while we continue to be impacted in positive and negative ways by it daily is brought into such sharp focus with Franny. It’s nuanced yet it effectively communicates complex ideas so well. There’s a balance too, which is hard to find in cli-fi sometimes. Either too hopefully or too dire. Plus, it tries to disabuse people of the notion that nature could somehow be entirely eradicated, when we don’t actually understand vast amounts of ecologies, or even ourselves. We hardly know how to nurture anything, let alone the outliers. But that doesn’t mean their fate is defined. As happens not infrequently with nature, edge cases and the non-typical may find a way to thrive in ways we can’t even imagine for ourselves.

Wow, what a beautiful and sad book. I had some strange inkling in the first 10 pages or so that this was going to be hard to keep my attention on this book, and I am glad I didn’t give in to that because I ended up being completely captivated. This book is very raw and very real, even though it’s technically science fiction set in the near future, in a time when we’ve killed off almost all the wildlife on our planet - fish and birds not escaping the mass extinctions. The narrator is an Irish wanderer with feathers and sea salt in her blood; as much as she loves, she can never stay, and the only two things she needs in life are “to walk and to swim.” And, of course, she needs birds. In fact, birds are what brought her to her husband who is her true love, and present on almost every page in writing and in memories and in the narrator’s heart strings, but mysteriously never in body. She is on a quest to follow the last of the Arctic terns on their final migration path from the Arctic to Antarctica, and you soon learn that she’s planning on the quest being a final migration herself. What keeps you going is the slow unwinding of the author’s haunted past, and the simultaneous slow knitting together of deep ties to crew on whose boat she has managed to catch a ride. For such a simple, short book, the revelations and turns of intention are both frequent and masterfully handled - never forced, and they hit you right in the heart even when you’ve seen them coming, slowly, for miles. This book is as hopeful as it is heartrending, and it somehow leaves you feeling lighter and heavier at the same time.

I was hesitant to read this because I was worried it would not be as good as Once There Were Wolves. My god. Somehow it is better. It hurt more. It was more uncomfortable to read. But it was better. My chest hurts. The two books compliment and contradict each other at every turn, two sides of the same coin that couldn't be more different. They're harmonious opposites.

A damaged woman traverses our damaged planet in pursuit of the last migrating arctic terns to make amends for her own continual migrations: leaving those she loves in search of those who were supposed to love her. A complex and moving novel of people being vulnerable and true, with breathtaking scenes on storm-tossed boats, desolate shores, and icy waters. Lays bare the hypocrisy of loving birds and caging them, of wanting our seas to teem with life and allowing commercial over-fishing, by imagining a not-too-distant future when there are few fish and few birds left for us humans to drive into extinction.

This is tough because I heavily fw the themes of this book, and the main character is personal and relatable, and the writing is great, but the vehicle didn't really do it for me. But its also on me for maybe not choosing the best time to read this.

I listened to this on audio and I think that was a huge detriment. I was just super bored the whole time and I think if I had read it physically the beauty of the writing would’ve come across more strongly.