Migrations

Dystopian fiction is something that I stay away from, give me a dose of reality any day. If I had known this book was set in the near future, I wouldn’t have touched it even with the longest of barge poles. Am I glad now that no one warned me about it!

Climate change has made its impact and most of earth’s wildlife has died out. It is in this scenario that Franny Stone is determined to follow the last of the Arctic terns in the world as they make their migration, perhaps their last, from the Arctic to Antarctica. She travels to Greenland and zeroes in on a ship whose crew is out to get one last catch that will redeem them from near penury. That she is riddled with secrets is evident right from the beginning. Through the course of the voyage her story as well as those of the crew is slowly unveiled and we see all of them moving towards their inevitable end. Moving from the ship to a prison in Ireland, from Australia to Galway, as each page turns we get to know the reasons behind Franny’s restlessness and her almost fanatic quest to see the birds to their final destination.

You read most books, then there are some you inhale and feel. This is one of those that strikes you viscerally and intimately. Franny’s vulnerability is something that you sense right from the beginning. The mist around chills you as well as the characters, yet you do not go numb. You can almost smell the ocean in its rawest form, your urge to check on the birds on the tracker is as primal as it is hers and the crew’s. The story leaves you with a sense of loss, reminds you starkly of how we are destroying the world around us, yet there is an underlying hope through it all.

There is hardly anything that I could find on the author online except that she is Australian and has a Masters Degree in Screenwriting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School. It would be quite interesting to know where her deep love for nature, wild life and climate change comes from. That it is something that she deeply relates to is evident from her next book ‘Once There Were Wolves’ with a female protagonist with her own set of secrets, who is on a mission to reintroduce wolves in the Scottish Highlands in an attempt to heal the dying landscape. Yes, I am half way through it already 🙂