Migrations
Book description
'An extraordinary novel... as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I've ever read' Emily St. John Mandel
A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive.
Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be…
Why read it?
4 authors picked Migrations as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Migrations is set in the near-future in a climate-ravaged world in which many species have gone or are going extinct. The lead character is a woman who's suffered great loss in her live and has now embarked on a desperate quest to save a dying species of bird. There's a mournful mood throughout the novel and tragic circumstances are gradually revealed, yet there's a glimmer of hope at the end.
I have tended to shy away from novels involving climate crises, but this book was different. I turned page after page, staying up way past my bedtime, to find out why Franny, the protagonist, was so driven to follow the Arctic terns on their epic migration. Turns out Franny, and some of her fellow travelers were on epic journeys of their own.
Though a geologist by education and profession, I’m an avid bird watcher too (as a little kid, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d reply, “I’m going to get a Ph.D. in ornithology”).…
From D.J.'s list on fiction books where science plays a main character.
I am in awe of Charlotte McConaghy’s skill—both at crafting beautiful prose and using the length of her novel to unfold the story of its main character (I have now seen her do this twice).
In a world in which many animals are extinct, Franny is on an obsessive mission to follow the migration of the last Arctic terns. It takes the course of the novel to understand Franny’s motivation, given to the reader in pieces and thereby made somewhat of a puzzle. Franny is a complex character, and coming to understand her and why she identifies with the terns…
From Eva's list on our connections with the natural environment.
Free-spirited Franny Lynch has spent a lifetime wandering away from those she loves — and circling back again and again. A mysterious tragedy prompts her to undertake the biggest journey of all when she joins the crew of the struggling Saghani, one of the last commercial fishing vessels still operating in the midst of the long-predicted global mass extinction of animals on land and in the oceans. Franny convinces the skeptical and superstitious captain to help her track the last migration of Arctic terns to Antarctica, the longest-known bird migration in the world. Franny’s mercurial nature elegantly unfolds over the…
From Sandra's list on climate change that pull no punches.
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