A review by a_rutter
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
5.0
This book was beautiful: it felt as if cold threads of grief were woven through each page. Grief for the natural world, grief for not being who we feel our loved ones need for us to be.... Throughout the book, I felt as if Franny were a selkie or a ghost (the specter of a selkie?), haunting her own life. The only thing stopping her from drowning herself in the cold ocean is her need to follow the terns on what could be their final migration.
While this novel takes place in what is most certainly a dystopia, where the majority of wild animals are extinct or rapidly approaching extinction, this seemed to be merely the setting for Franny's story. At first, one might feel that this is disingenuous: how can a human exist in a world where the pollinators are dying (or have died), where the seas have been bankrupted of their denizens, where forests are silent? How could you live there and not be consumed by it? How false, to have a character focus on the terns and her own shattered life. And yet, when we are lost and grieving (which Franny is, for most of her life), we often fail to see the world around us. And when we are living our lives, day-to-day, do we truly consider all that is happening around us? Because I know I get up and go to work every day, eat meals with my family, fret about my personal daily stresses -- all while global climate change is causing habitat losses, while microplastics and low levels of runoff chemicals like PFAS infiltrate our ecosystems....
This book was incredibly evocative in the descriptions of the natural world and the feelings of being off-balance (I'm sure reading this in VT in February helped a little). The author's choice to use the present tense throughout (even in the flashbacks) lent a sense of urgency & momentum.
While this novel takes place in what is most certainly a dystopia, where the majority of wild animals are extinct or rapidly approaching extinction, this seemed to be merely the setting for Franny's story. At first, one might feel that this is disingenuous: how can a human exist in a world where the pollinators are dying (or have died), where the seas have been bankrupted of their denizens, where forests are silent? How could you live there and not be consumed by it? How false, to have a character focus on the terns and her own shattered life. And yet, when we are lost and grieving (which Franny is, for most of her life), we often fail to see the world around us. And when we are living our lives, day-to-day, do we truly consider all that is happening around us? Because I know I get up and go to work every day, eat meals with my family, fret about my personal daily stresses -- all while global climate change is causing habitat losses, while microplastics and low levels of runoff chemicals like PFAS infiltrate our ecosystems....
This book was incredibly evocative in the descriptions of the natural world and the feelings of being off-balance (I'm sure reading this in VT in February helped a little). The author's choice to use the present tense throughout (even in the flashbacks) lent a sense of urgency & momentum.