Title: THE LAST MIGRATION
Author: Charlotte McConaghy
Read: December 2020
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Book Description:
A dark past. An impossible journey.
The will to survive.
How far you would you go for love? Franny Stone is determined to go to the end
of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final
migration to Antarctica.
As animal populations plummet and commercial fishing faces prohibition, Franny
talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and
the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of
Franny’s life begin to unspool. A daughter’s yearning search for her mother. An
impulsive, passionate marriage. A shocking crime. Haunted by love and violence,
Franny must confront what she is really running towards – and from.
The Last Migration is a wild, gripping and deeply moving novel from a
brilliant young writer. From the west coast of Ireland to Australia and remote
Greenland, through crashing Atlantic swells to the bottom of the world, this is
an ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened, and an epic story of
the possibility of hope against all odds.
My musings:
“What are you reading?” My husband asked.
“Oh, it’s this fantastic story about
climate change, and all the birds and wild animals have become extinct, and
there is this one woman who wants to follow the last of the Arctic terns on
their final migration to Greenland ...”
“Ewww, that sounds terribly sad and
depressing!”
Sad, yes, heart-wrenching. Eye
opening. Gut-punching. Haunting and thought provoking. And if you think it’s
dystopian, then sadly we are on this very path of destruction of our beautiful
planet, which also made it very relevant.
In Frannie, Charlotte McConaghy has
created the perfect character for this type of story. Flawed, single-minded,
deeply scarred and emotionally unstable, Frannie is not only following her
dream of seeing her beloved birds’ last migration but is also outrunning her
dark past. The multiple timelines worked well here to piece together various
pieces of Frannie’s past to explain what motivates her on this final journey.
Set against the stunning backdrop of Greenland and the wild Arctic waters, the
story soon swept me along in its wake.
THE LAST MIGRATION is not a happy
story, but it is a beautiful written and very poignant one. If you find
dystopian a bit hard to swallow, you might enjoy a story that is closely linked
to the trajectory we are finding ourselves on at the moment. It certainly gave
me many unpleasant truths to reflect on, and for this I am grateful. But there
was also great adventure and courage, and characters I deeply felt for. And
when the final truth was finally revealed, I suddenly understood why Frannie
felt so driven to self-destruction.
Summary:
In summary, THE LAST MIGRATION was a touching story
about loss, grief and survival in a world that is not so very removed from our
own. It’s terrifying in a way that only a dystopian novel with its roots in the
truth can be. Beautifully told and with a stunning wilderness setting, the book
will take you on a journey to the edges of endurance but still leave you with a
spark of hope.
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