The specter of the wilderness haunts this novel. This is a novel that doles out heartbreaking events as twists (like the will-she-won’t-she of her planned suicide), but Migrations doesn’t need them it has so much else to offer. McConaghy can’t stop heaping on steaming piles of sadness, as if without an overstuffed grab-bag of tragedy a character has no basis for her pain. What better way to demonstrate the logical endpoint of mankind’s rapaciousness than to cast out little reminders of Ahab’s crew spearing and stripping scores of whales for profit and pleasure?. References to Moby Dick offer up Migrations as a kind of bookend to that early American industrial-era parable. McConaghy has a gift for sketching out enveloping, memorable characters using only the smallest of strokes, which makes Franny’s time with the crew of the Saghani the novel’s strongest and most vibrant thread. And yet this is a unique specimen: If worry is the staple emotion that most climate fiction evokes in its readers, Migrations - the novelistic equivalent of an energizing cold plunge - flutters off into more expansive territory.
this is a climate novel, a species of fiction that is too-little-loved (perhaps because it’s too frequently patronizing) but by no means endangered in 2020. Brimming with stunning imagery and raw emotion, Migrations is the incredible story of personal redemption, self-forgiveness and hope for the future in the face of a world on the brink of collapse. Despite the dark nature of the story, McConaghy's novel manages to capture moments of lightness that keep hope and wonder in beauty alive for both her characters and readers. Even the obvious judgment of humanity's guilt in the extinction crisis receives nuanced revelation as conservationist Franny discovers an unlikely connection with fisherman Ennis. Incorporating science and conservancy research, McConaghy doesn't oversimplify the crisis and, despite its vastness, it never overpowers Franny's own development. McConaghy paints a feverish, evocative picture of our crumbling world balance. Through flashbacks to Franny's childhood in Ireland, her intense romance and sudden elopement with Niall, the search for her mother (missing since childhood) and her bleak years in prison for a crime she does not remember, McConaghy carefully peels back the layers of her life and then meticulously weaves them together again, giving greater context and intensity to Franny's current pilgrimage to the Antarctic Circle. Spanning oceans and decades, Franny's physical and emotional journeys are at times devastating and, at others, surprisingly, undeniably hopeful.
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