540. Migrations
Rating: ☆☆1/2
Recommended by: Terra McKinish
Author: Charlotte McConaghy
Genre: Fiction, Environment
256 pages, published August 4, 2020
Reading Format: Book
Summary
Migrations chronicles the life and adventures of bird specialist Franny Stone who leaves behind everything to trek to Greenland so that she can follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny joins the crew of a fishing boat as her only hope of completing her mission. Set in a world where all animal species are quickly becoming extinct, Migrations contemplates the ramifications of a climatic apocalypse.
Quotes
“It isn’t fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay.”
“A life’s impact can be measured by what it gives and what it leaves behind, but it can also be measured by what it steals from the world.”
“But there won’t be any more journeys after this one, no more oceans explored. And maybe that’s why I am filled with calm. My life has been a migration without a destination, and that in itself is senseless. I leave for no reason, just to be moving, and it breaks my heart a thousand times, a million.”
“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.”
“I don’t know how to force the world into a shape I can manage.”
“We are, all of us, given such a brief moment of time together, it hardly seems fair. But it’s precious, and maybe it’s enough, and maybe it’s right that our bodies dissolve into the earth, giving our energy back to it, feeding the little creatures in the ground and giving nutrients to the soil, and maybe it’s right that our consciousness rests. The thought is peaceful.”
“It’s impossible to control someone else’s capacity for forgiveness.”
“He said our lives mean nothing except as a cycle of regeneration, that we are incomprehensibly brief sparks, just as the animals are, that we are no more important than they are, no more worthy of life than any living creature. That in our self-importance, in our search for meaning, we have forgotten how to share the planet that gave us life.”
“We’re the only planet that has oceans. In all the known universe, we’re the only one sitting in the perfect spot for them, not too hot and not too cold, and it’s the only reason we’re alive, because it’s the ocean that creates the oxygen we need to breathe.”
“I think there is meaning, and it lives in nurturing, in making life sweeter for ourselves, and for those around us.”
“think of the courage of this and I could cry with it, and maybe there’s something in his eyes that suggests he understands a little of that.”
“Yours is a terrible will,” he told me once. And that is true, but I have been a casualty of it far longer than he has.”
My Take
While there is some interesting imagry and concepts in Migrations, I had a hard time warming up to this book. Probably because I really didn’t like the self absorbed and self destructive protagonist Franny. However, others in my book group really liked it, so it might just be me.
