... beautifully haunting ... Spanning oceans and decades, Franny's physical and emotional journeys are at times devastating and, at others, surprisingly, undeniably hopeful. Through flashbacks to Franny's childhood in Ireland, her intense romance and sudden elopement with Niall, the search for her mother (missing since childhood) and her bleak years in prison for a crime she does not remember, McConaghy carefully peels back the layers of her life and then meticulously weaves them together again, giving greater context and intensity to Franny's current pilgrimage to the Antarctic Circle ... McConaghy paints a feverish, evocative picture of our crumbling world balance. Incorporating science and conservancy research, McConaghy doesn't oversimplify the crisis and, despite its vastness, it never overpowers Franny's own development. Even the obvious judgment of humanity's guilt in the extinction crisis receives nuanced revelation as conservationist Franny discovers an unlikely connection with fisherman Ennis ... Despite the dark nature of the story, McConaghy's novel manages to capture moments of lightness that keep hope and wonder in beauty alive for both her characters and readers. Brimming with stunning imagery and raw emotion, Migrations is the incredible story of personal redemption, self-forgiveness and hope for the future in the face of a world on the brink of collapse.
... this is a climate novel, a species of fiction that is too-little-loved (perhaps because it’s too frequently patronizing) but by no means endangered in 2020. And yet this is a unique specimen: If worry is the staple emotion that most climate fiction evokes in its readers, Migrations — the novelistic equivalent of an energizing cold plunge — flutters off into more expansive territory ... McConaghy has a gift for sketching out enveloping, memorable characters using only the smallest of strokes, which makes Franny’s time with the crew of the Saghani the novel’s strongest and most vibrant thread ... References to Moby Dick offer up Migrations as a kind of bookend to that early American industrial-era parable. What better way to demonstrate the logical endpoint of mankind’s rapaciousness than to cast out little reminders of Ahab’s crew spearing and stripping scores of whales for profit and pleasure? ... McConaghy can’t stop heaping on steaming piles of sadness, as if without an overstuffed grab-bag of tragedy a character has no basis for her pain ... This is a novel that doles out heartbreaking events as twists (like the will-she-won’t-she of her planned suicide), but Migrations doesn’t need them; it has so much else to offer ... The specter of the wilderness haunts this novel ... McConaghy has an eye for the webs of connectivity that humans have ditched in favor of their own supposed development, and Migrations, rather than struggle to convince readers of some plan of environmental action, instead puts humans in their place.
... visceral and haunting ... As well as a work of first-rate climate fiction, Migrations is also a clever reimagining of Moby-Dick, that foundational text of humankind vs. nature, of hubris vs. humility ... Sea yarns that serve as voyages of self-discovery have been the exclusive literary domain of men for far too long, and McConaghy deserves extra credit for sounding the oceanic depths of the female soul ... Once the ship is in motion, there are some delightful flashes of camaraderie among the crew, as Franny is shown the ropes — and knots — of life on a purse seiner, pitched and pestered by North Atlantic storms. These workaday details are expertly rendered ... Occasionally McConaghy reaches back to traumatic episodes in Franny’s troubled past, unspooling the details of her life with admirable artistry ... is not without flaws ... As the crew nears their destination, the plot gets jerky, at times leaning upon melodrama, and the narrative’s previous vagueness about this dystopian world feels flimsy and concocted. At one point, fishing is banned worldwide by a nameless governmental body; at another, Franny is pursued by a nameless sea police force. Also, the notion that anyone in Newfoundland is ever going to hold up a sign that says 'Justice for fish, death to fishermen,' even after the global collapse of the world’s sea life, is sheer fantasy ... Still, this novel’s prose soars with its transporting descriptions of the planet’s landscapes and their dwindling inhabitants, and contains many wonderful meditations on our responsibilities to our earthly housemates ... a nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over. It’s a story about our mingling sorrows, both personal and global, and the survivor’s guilt that will be left in their wake.
...the novel is dreamy, elegiac, often heightened to the register of fairytales or myths; and it is set in a near future, where the effects of climate change have meant that the world’s animal life has almost completely died out ... The Last Migration is something of a hybrid novel, both an adventure story and a piece of speculative climate fiction, constantly slipping between a kind of literary realism and more magical elements, between moments of domestic drama ... McConaghy also structures much of the book and fleshes out her characters according to metaphor ... This all adds to the broody, otherworldly quality of the book’s atmosphere, but it does, at times, begin to feel a bit laboured and mannered – especially as the novel progresses ... aching and poignant.
Franny’s woes, revealed in staggered flashbacks, are so extensive and extravagant that they begin to be slightly funny. But a bit of melodrama is permissible in a good nautical adventure, and Migrations moves at a fast, exciting clip, motored as much by love for 'creatures that aren’t human' as by outrage at their destruction.
...thrilling ... In piecing together who this mysterious protagonist really is, McConaghy creates a detailed portrait of a woman on the cusp of collapse, consumed with a world that is every bit as broken as she is. Migrations offers a grim window into a future that doesn’t feel very removed from our own.
The beauty and the heartbreak of this novel is that it’s not preposterous. It feels true and affecting, elegiac and imminent ... 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 ... The fractured timeline fills each chapter with suspense and surprises, parceled out so tantalizingly that it took disciplined willpower to keep from skipping down each page to see what happens. At every turn, the exhilarating events of the plot — tempests at sea! fugitives on the run! — are enriched by deep themes illustrated with broad metaphors and intricate details ... In many ways, this is a story about grieving, an intimate tale of anguish set against the incalculable bereavements of climate change. There are many losses, but lives are also saved. Franny charts our course through a novel that is efficient and exciting, indicting but forgiving, and hard but ultimately hopeful.
Beautiful, emotional, and tearing at your moorings, this is a story for the ages, a meditation on what connects us throughout our evolutionary history. Without sentimentality, Charlotte McConaghy takes the reader on a searing emotional roller coaster right to the edge of the abyss, and then she pushes; we gasp and claw to right ourselves ... Charlote McConaghy yanks us into her novel’s orbit. The recognition is so instant, and rings so true, we begin to feel we may have been shaken from the dream that living on earth used to be ... In spite of the sadness of these losses, we want to read on; the writing is breathtaking and by now, our hearts are held captive by this writer. Fanny leaps into yet another body of freezing water and we jump in with the gorgeous prose that describes it ... Fanny asks important but elusive questions for the ages ... And then, McConaghy pulls us back from the frightening abyss with hope and love that even after the harshness, are powerful enough to salvage something of the beauty in this world we hardly know anymore.
... powerful ... a novel of the crimes we inflict on nature, but such killings are not the point. Rather, McConaghy uses them to set the stage for the crimes we visit on ourselves and other humans ... McConaghy is a beautiful storyteller, evoking a sense of loss and longing for a natural world long depleted. Even in that emptiness, she portrays a sense of lushness, leaving us heartbroken with recognition that we are the ones to have caused such destruction ... does require some patience, as the story jumps back and forth both in time and location. But these twists are central to the plot; the author uses them to uncover facts, as if she were dusting off a coat of snow that shields a vital truth ... Taken as a whole, Migrations is a wonderful novel and worthwhile journey. The reader will enjoy it not just for its depictions of nature, but for the range of emotions McConaghy evokes. She forces us to look upon our sins large and small and see what consequences we all must bear.
Toggling back and forth in time and from place to place, the plot floats through gut-wrenching vignettes of Franny’s escapades, strung together like clues on a life-or-death scavenger hunt ... Whether she’s in Australia, Trondheim, Greenland, Galway, Scotland, Yellowstone or Antarctica, Franny’s unsettled heart sets the scene ... Prepare to mourn a bleak image of the future and to embrace an everlasting hope in Franny’s heroic example.
The slow revelation of a tragedy for which Franny feels responsible adds a thrillerlike dimension to an already involving narrative made stronger by the absence of time markers; it could be taking place in two years or 20 years, but it could just as well be happening today ... A consummate blend of issue and portrait, warning and affirmation, this heartbreaking, lushly written work is highly recommended.
McConaghy’s transfixing, gorgeously precise novel is propelled by Franny’s desperate effort to follow what may be the last flock of Arctic terns on their perilous migration from Greenland, where she finesses her way onto a fishing boat, to Antarctica ... The scenes on board the Saghani, with its intriguing outcast crew, are psychologically intense and physically harrowing. McConaghy’s evocation of a world bereft of wildlife is piercing; Franny’s otherworldliness is captivating, and her extreme misadventures and anguished secrets are gripping. Some may find this darkly enrapturing work of ecofiction too heavily plotted, but all the violence, shock, and loss Franny navigates do aptly, and unnervingly, foreshadow a possible environmental apocalypse.
... clunky ... While McConaghy’s plot is engaging, her writing can be a heavy-handed distraction. Lovers of ornithology and intense drama will find what they need in this uneven tale.
