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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Aug 2020, 272 pages
Paperback:
Jul 2021, 288 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers
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For readers of Flight Behavior and Station Eleven, a 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 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK (Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Time, Vulture, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Newsweek, The Millions, Library Journal, Maclean's, and more)
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 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 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 she is full of dark secrets: night terrors, an unsent pile of letters, and an obsession with pursuing the terns at any cost. 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 both an ode to our threatened world and a breathtaking page-turner about the lengths we will go for the people we love.
1
The animals are dying. Soon we will be alone here.
Once, my husband found a colony of storm petrels on the rocky coast of the untamed Atlantic. The night he took me there, I didn't know they were some of the last of their kind. I knew only that they were fierce in their night caves and bold as they dove through moonlit waters. We stayed a time with them, and for those few dark hours we were able to pretend we were the same, as wild and free. Once, when the animals were going, really and truly and not just in warnings of dark futures but now, right now, in mass extinctions we could see and feel, I decided to follow a bird over an ocean. Maybe I was hoping it would lead me to where they'd all fled, all those of its kind, all the creatures we thought we'd killed. Maybe I thought I'd discover whatever cruel thing drove me to leave people and places and everything, always. Or maybe I was just hoping the bird's final migration would show me a place to belong. .
Once, it was birds who gave ...
Here are some of the comments posted about Migrations.
You can see the full discussion here.
Discuss Franny's relationship with her mother. Do you think Franny was still searching for her mother, even after she remembered the truth?
Well, of course she loved her mother and they were especially close when she was young. But goodness, talk about childhood trauma, Franny is the poster girl for trauma, and obviously she suffered because of it all her life. She continued to search ... - lar
Discuss the impact that Franny and Niall's stillborn daughter had on them as individuals and as a couple.
Franny had many losses in her life, and she seemed to blame herself for them, but particularly for the stillbirth loss of her own child. She felt 100% responsible for the child’s death. Her husband Niall seemed to mourn the death as a ... - Marcia C
Discuss the novel's first lines. How do mass extinctions shape the characters and plot? What are the similarities and differences between Franny's world and our own? Would you describe this novel as dystopian?
The scary part here is not that this book is dystopian, but that it isn't. This could be our future. Most of us might not live long enough to see it, but future generations will if we humans continue to believe that our needs and wants are more ... - scottishrose
Do you think Ennis was right to do what his wife asked? Is his inability to stay similar to Franny's?
I find it interesting that his wife didn't want their children to live with him. She took them to her parents. I have to assume that is where she was living out her final days also. Ennis honored her request while she was sick, but even at the ... - scottishrose
Do you think Franny is right to blame herself and plead guilty?
I don't think Franny was guilty of murder. But I think in that moment, she did purposely drive into the other car. She wasn't in her right mind when she pled guilty. She had suffered the shock of Greta's death, Niall's death, and ... - scottishrose
The author describes a future we do not want. But her bleak vision is only one element of this engrossing story. The novel is also a warm combination of a love story, a perilous journey, a dark back story that is only gradually revealed, echoes of classics (Moby Dick, Jules Verne and Hans Christian Andersen immediately come to mind, along with tales of orphans) and mesmerizing nature writing... Just as Flight Behavior changes the way its readers look at and think about butterflies, and The Overstory does that for trees, so does Migrations for birds (Deborah W)...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers).
Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel and Station Eleven
Migrations is as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I've ever read. This is an extraordinary novel by a wildly talented writer. Geraldine Brooks, author of The Secret Chord and March
This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairy-tale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend Migrations with my whole heart. Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We Kept
Migrations is a wonder. I read it in a gasp. There is hope in these pages; a balm for these troubled times. Charlotte McConaghy's words cut through to the bone. Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild
An astounding meditation on love, trauma, and the cost of survival. A true force of a book that I read holding my breath from its start to its symphonic finish. Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World
Migrations is indeed about loss--but what makes it miraculous is that it is also about hope. Written in prose as gorgeous as the crystalline beauty of the Arctic, Migrations is deeply moving, haunting, and, yes, important.
In Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations, Franny follows the migration of the Arctic tern (sterna paradisaea). McConaghy's novel is set in a fictional future in which the bird is on the brink of extinction. Currently, Arctic terns are not in danger to such a degree, as there are still more than one million of them around the world, but their habitats are threatened by climate change.
The Arctic tern is a small, grayish-white bird that ranges in length from about 11 to 15 inches, with a wingspan of between 25 and 30 inches. It holds the record for the longest observed migration journey of any bird; its yearly pattern runs from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back, covering a distance of at least 25,000 miles. Arctic terns breed in open, ...
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