Hello readers,
I started this book review back in January… I haven’t read a novel that moved me to tears in a long time and add several years of not writing book reviews, I was met with writer’s block. Migrations ripped me apart and I still cannot stop thinking about it, but I am now in a place in life where I have found my voice again and would like to share with you all what I have to say.
Franny Stone is in constant motion. Always leaving, never staying long. If she leaves first, then no one can leave her. She’s ready to live a willfully detached existence until beautiful and scientific Niall comes into her life and makes her question everything. When tragedy strikes, Franny decides to venture off on her last journey, and does so by talking her way into the hearts of the Saghani crew, who become the family she didn’t know she was missing. Franny and the Saghani crew traverse unknown waters as they follow the last Arctic terns on their migration in a dying world. Arctic terns have the longest migration of all animals, and like the terns, Franny must make the journey toward healing from her past in order to survive. As Franny moves from Ireland to Australia, to all over the Atlantic Ocean heading towards Antarctica, Charlotte McConaghy ushers readers through the rough waters of the consequences of Franny’s actions, and what it means to go to great lengths to find redemption. This devastating tale will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
Content Warning (CW): suicide, suicidal ideation, body horror (car wreck), sexual assault, stillbirth. This review does not contain spoilers, the content warning is there for if you decide to read the novel.
Although this is a tragedy, I was led to believe that this novel would mostly be about climate change, and it is… but also not really. You know what I think constantly goes through Franny’s head? This thought: “If I leave first then nothing can hurt me.” She is psychologically scarred and at one point in her life she was ready to live willfully detached to reality. Then she meets Niall. The one person who she feels comfortable and safe around to finally stay still. Live. Franny is met with a cruel fate though, and when she is finally ready to stop running, tragedy strikes. I sometimes used to criticize lessons in English classes where we’d have to analyze certain aspects of a novel, like the symbolism of colors (for example, the white curtains in The Great Gatsby… hello, why can’t they just be white for aesthetics??) However, I found myself analyzing Franny Stone with a magnifying glass as if she were an ant. Readers cannot deny that Franny has, at the very least, C-PTSD. It’s palpable. She experienced enough childhood trauma that she actually suffers memory loss of certain events in her life until Niall, gently, brings awareness back to everything so that she can properly heal. While Niall isn’t the one who helps Franny find her path towards healing, she does find healing when she is with the Saghani crew. They are the family she never had. All wanderers. The theme is about searching for something important and the lengths people will go to find it. Franny is searching for redemption and healing, the Saghani crew are trying to find their place in the world that hates them simply because of their profession in fishing, Niall is finding solutions for animal extinction and climate change, and the last Arctic terns are searching for their source of food.
I invite you to primarily focus on all of the parts that are about Franny and Niall’s relationship, and I would argue that the rest of the plot will make sense based off of their dynamic. This is about a love story that parallels with a dying world. Migrations asks you what you would do for someone/something you love, and answers with Franny’s extraordinary example. The time she spends with the crew of the Saghani and their migration with the Earth’s last Arctic terns is still important though, because like the Arctic terns, Franny must make the journey towards healing in order to truly live her life. Her travels with the crew propels her toward an acceptance she has fought for years, and redemption is at the end of that acceptance. It is also a tragic love story of the world that we now know, and how our humanly actions affect the flora and fauna of this Earth for good or bad. McConaghy shows us what the consequences would look like if we all continue down a bad path. Migrations is a forlorn landscape, yet readers must make the journey with Franny as she picks up pieces of her life and past trauma to put together a purpose for a greater good.
I loved reading this story and I hope you do too. I also highly recommend a box of tissues by your side when you read Migrations.
Pro(s):
• Character development is on point. Aside from Franny, McConaghy develops each character enough that readers understand who they are but does not bombard you with unnecessary details.
• Wanderlust. This book will give you serious wanderlust!
Con(s):
• Do not read this for a story about climate change unless you are content with the climate change issues being a background theme. As stated earlier, the theme is about searching but truthfully more so about survival. There are many examples of survival in this story but not all are in relation to plants and animals trying to survive in a dying world. In fact, it is casually mentioned that there are plenty of animals that are extinct at this point, but McConaghy does not attempt to accurately describe how this affects ecosystems around the world. It’s not that she’s wrong in what she does write about, because she does give examples throughout the novel, it’s just that this story isn’t required to reveal lengthy details of the affects because it’s not supposed to be focused on climate change.
Favorite Quotes:
“I have always been frightened of dead things, birds more so than anything else. There is nothing so disturbing as a creature born to flight being bound to dull lifelessness.” (43)
“If I had the power, I’d carry the birds all the way. Protect them from the journey’s difficulty. Then again, it’s a fool who tries to protect a creature from its own instincts.”
“I find mine in the sky again, leading the way. She is smaller and smaller, halved and halved again. Don’t, I whisper, inside. Don’t leave. But I know she must. It’s in her nature.” (59)
“Even though they are as varied as a group of people can be, I can tell they are the same, all of these sailors. Something was missing in their lives on land, and they went seeking the answer. Whatever it was, I don’t doubt for a second that they each found it. They are migrants of land, and they love it out here on an ocean that offered them a different way of life, they love this boat, and, as much as they may bicker and fight, they love each other.” (76)
“I’m writing down the addresses when Niall Lynch walks past the row of computers with a pile of books in his arms. He doesn’t look at me but my eyes are pulled to him as if by gravity, or perhaps something less scientific, something for which I don’t yet have a name… I’ve been to his lectures but he hasn’t looked at me once and maybe this is all part of his design because he has turned me effortlessly into a creature made of obsession.” (82)
“My life has been a migration without a destination, and that in itself is senseless. I leave for no reason, just to be moving, and it breaks my heart a thousand times, a million. It’s a relief to at last have a purpose. I wonder what it will feel like to stop… We are, all of us, given such a brief moment of time together, it hardly seems fair. But it’s precious, and maybe it’s enough, and maybe it’s right that our bodies dissolve into the earth, giving out energy back to it… and maybe it’s right that our consciousness rests. The thought is peaceful. When I go there will be nothing of me left behind. No children to carry on my genes. No art to commemorate my name, nothing written down, no great acts. I think of the impact of a life like that. It sounds quiet, and so small as to be invisible. It sounds like the unexplored, unseen Point Nemo. But I know better than that. 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.” (89-90)
“Niall told me on our wedding night, as we gazed into the wild Atlantic, that for him it was because he’d dreamed of me before we met. “Not you, exactly. Of course. But something that felt as you did that night… It was so familiar. I recognized you.” “What did it feel like?” He thought for a while and then said, “Something scientific.” This, I accepted- a tad disappointed- was his cynicism. But I was wrong. It remains to this day the most romantic thing he has ever said to me, only I didn’t know that until much later.” (92)
“I lie in the sea and feel more lost than ever, because I’m not meant to be homesick, I’m not meant to long for the things I have always been so desperate to leave. It isn’t fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay.”
“It’s impossible to control someone else’s capacity for forgiveness.” (194)
“Willful detachment is a very dangerous state of mind.” (222)
“Before my wife was my wife, she was a creature I studied. Now, this very morning, her fingers were splayed over the lump by her belly button, the elbow or fist or foot pressing itself toward us, wriggling to the sound of my voice, reaching to be closer. It moved, this tiny person, and Franny’s eyes shone like a light so bright as she looked at me, looked in astonishment, in fear and in joy. She loves this child, and it’s her cage. I think she only agreed to keep it because she wanted me to be left with something when she breaks free. The thing that calls to her, whatever it is, will call again. But she has forgotten my promise. I wait, always. Our daughter will wait with me. And maybe one day she too will leave, off on an adventure. And then I will wait for her, too.” (241-242)
“Mam used to tell me to look for the clues. “The clues to what?” I asked for the first time. “To life. They’re hidden everywhere.” ” (254)
Recommended Music:
I’ve always liked recommending songs that I’ve listened to while reading a particular novel, and here are two songs I’d recommend for Migrations:
1) “Experience” by: Ludovico Einaudi
2) “Frigate Birds” by: Cosmo Sheldrake
Read-Alikes:
I’m sure there are read-alikes to Migrations, but this honestly stood out to me as a work all on it’s own.
-Kena
My Novel Garden 