Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

‘Migrations’ was one of my favorite novels of 2022. Charlotte McConaghy published this exquisite story in 2019. Suspenseful, gripping and atmospheric, the novel stunned me with its ability to immerse the reader in a different world. Characterized as a CLI-FI (climate fiction) McConaghy certainly comprehends the implications of climate change, but she is also an insightful interpreter of the human soul. 

 

The protagonist of the novel, Franny Stone is a thirty-year-old Irish woman with a troubled past. The details of that past slowly reveal themselves in each chapter, like puzzle pieces that create a full picture by the end of the story. 

 

The novel take place in the not-too-distant future where most wild animals are extinct. No food for one species means no food for the animals up the food chain. So now animals are bred in farms for food, but the natural world as we know it has ceased to exist. 

 

Though not formally educated, Franny’s knowledge about birds is voluminous.  Scientists in the story believed that the Arctic Wren a species of bird was still alive and making their long migration from the Artic to Antarctica.  Franny wants to follow the Wren to their destination. She talks her way onto a fishing vessel where the crew hopes to take in one last big catch. At some level, she thinks that if she saves the birds, maybe she can save herself.  

 

As we learn about Franny’s life, we can see she is running toward the natural world and away from her traumatic past. Like her mother, she is restless soul who wanders during the day and sleepwalks at night.  She says, “It isn't fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay.” It feels like she is punishing herself for some unnamed transgressions which we lean in a slow cadence of revelation.  Franny’s painful experience of her younger days has nestled into her soul and she feels that she cannot change and must be punished, and yet her resiliency and growth.

 

‘Migrations’ is heavy and heartbreaking, raw and wrenching. It is a character driven story about a woman wrestling with her past while living in an eerie world without the sound or sight of animals. No fish, no birds, no mammals. This story aches with the fallibility and majesty of human choices both individually and globally. McConghay is not didactic, just factual. if we don’t make changes The world we know will no longer exist.