A review by purplemuskogee
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No

4.0

I enjoyed this book, which I read in just a day, but I also found it difficult to follow and difficult to categorise. The narrator Franny is trying to follow the last migration of the Arctic terns - who are expected to go extinct anytime soon, like most other wild animals already have - and manages to hitch a ride from the Saghani, a fishing vessel, from Greenland down the Atlantic. Franny is an unreliable narrator, and the timeline isn't linear with many flashbacks to her past, in Australia, Dublin and Galway. There are a few plot twists, but I can't say I found them surprising: Franny is repeatedly shown to be "a wanderer", a complex character, a sleepwalker who turns sometimes violent. None of this is really explained and that bothered me, just like the world she lives in, where all wild animals have gone extinct due to climate change, isn't explained and ends up feeling like a detail. I think the strength of the book is the anxiety it generates, and its beautiful writing, rather than its characters or universe. 
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