I was at the beginning-ish part of Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy – far enough in to have a handle on the main players and an idea of where McConaghy was taking me – so I absolutely did not expect a plot-twist, dropped in so delicately that had I been skim-reading, I would have missed it. Wow.

And then there was another one. I was anticipating a gripping read.

The story focuses on Franny Stone, a woman who ‘…never worked out how to be relied upon and also free’ (and she comes from a long line of women who were ‘…able to love but unable to stay…’).

My life has been a migration without a destination, and that in itself is senseless.

The story zigzags between the past and the present. The parts set in the past give glimpses of Franny’s troubled childhood; her adult years when she first meets the man she marries; and her attempts to understand her family history. The ‘present’ (note that this book is dystopian) is set on a commercial fishing boat, with Franny determined to track the migration of Arctic terns, despite the crew thinking her foolish. The skipper agreed to Franny’s plan when she promised him that the birds would lead him to fish – significant given that fish are almost extinct.

I enjoyed the descriptions of the sailing – it was action-packed and dramatic, and included mentions of exciting stuff like Point Nemo. McConaghy uses the rough seas and the calmer waters as transition points for the flashbacks to Franny’s life before boarding the boat –

It’s not life I’m tired of, with its astonishing ocean currents and layers of ice and all the delicate feathers that make up a wing. It’s myself.

There are two worlds. One is made of water and earth, of rock and minerals. It has a core, a mantle and a crust, and oxygen for breathing. The other is made of fear. I have inhabited each and know one to feel deceptively like the other.

Initially I was engrossed, but after those first two plot twists, there were more. Actually, too many for the story to remain plausible, and by the halfway point, McConaghy had lost me (especially the sleep-walking bits which were almost on a par with the Creative Writing 101 crime – “And then I woke and realised it was all a dream…”).

Migrations could be classed as ‘dystopian-lite’ – at the beginning of the novel, there was enough in there to paint a frightening picture of the future, but equally enough that was familiar, making aspects of the story possible. My main issue with this book (apart from too many plot twists!) was with the ‘science’. I think it is intended to be a climate change story and yet, despite the loss of virtually every species of animal on Earth and some habitat, it’s hugely inconsistent.

Eighty per cent of all wild animal life has died. They say most of the rest will go in the next decade or two. We’ll keep farmed creatures. Those will survive because we must keep our bellies full of their flesh. And domesticated pets will be fine because they let us forget about the rest, the ones dying.

…if you or anyone you know wish to visit the remaining forests of the world, you need to join the waiting lists immediately, for it is becoming more likely that the lists will outgrow the life spans of the forests.

The birds and the fish have nearly all gone but Arctic and Antarctic ice remains..? There’s no mention of extreme climate events, or loss of island nations, or how the air is breathable without forests, or the fact that we rely on food chains and food webs… Even if I did my best imagining, it simply didn’t make sense, and for that reason, Migrations was a fail.

2/5

“Spag bol,” Basil says as he returns with more plates. “You said you wanted something normal so here you bloody go.”
“But…how?”
“It’s deconstructed.”
“Well…can it please be reconstructed?”