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The Last Migration
The Last Migration
Oct 11, 2024 4:24 AM

Author:Charlotte McConaghy,Barrie Kreinik

The Last Migration

Brought to you by Penguin.

A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive.

How far would you go for love? Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica.

As animal populations plummet and commercial fishing faces prohibition, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny's life begin to unspool. A daughter's yearning search for her mother. An impulsive, passionate marriage. A shocking crime. Haunted by love and violence, Franny must confront what she is really running towards - and from.

The Last Migration is a wild, gripping and deeply moving novel from a brilliant young writer. From the west coast of Ireland to Australia and remote Greenland, through crashing Atlantic swells to the bottom of the world, this is an ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened, and an epic story of the possibility of hope against all odds.

'An extraordinary novel... as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I've ever read' Emily St. John Mandel

© Charlotte McConaghy 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

Compulsive stuff, driven at a cracking pace by the power of the elements and the fierce will of its single-minded narrator

—— Stephanie Cross , Daily Mail

The Last Migration is as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I've ever read. This is an extraordinary novel by a wildly talented writer

—— Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

There's a brooding lushness to this novel's prose that belies its stark premise... this keening lament of an adventure is compelling.

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Observer

An adventure of a wilder sort

—— Vogue US

A fascinating hybrid of nature writing and dystopian fiction... gripping... by merging cli-fi and nature writing, the novel powerfully demonstrates the spiritual and emotional costs of environmental destruction

—— The Economist

The Last Migration is a wonder. I read it in a gasp. There is hope in these pages; a balm for these troubled times. McConaghy's words cut through to the bone

—— Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We Kept

I’m a sucker for a complicated narrator, and Franny Stone might be the queen of them all. In this tantalizingly beautiful epic, Franny’s life has been marked by secrets and loss, and so she turns to where she cannot reach: the skies

—— Lauren Puckett , Elle US

Gripping, tender and beautifully done. This novel is as intimate as it is urgent—you emerge thrilled and dazed, but also galvanized to save the planet

—— Anna Funder, author of Stasiland

Visceral and haunting...This novel's prose soars with its transporting descriptions of the planet's landscapes and their dwindling inhabitants, and contains many wonderful meditations on our responsibilities to our earthly housemates...The Last Migration is a nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over

—— The New York Times Book Review

Dreamy, elegiac... both an adventure story and a piece of speculative climate fiction, constantly slipping between a kind of literary realism and more magical elements, between moments of domestic drama and sweeping epic... an aching and poignant book, and one that's pressing in its timeliness... It's also a book about love, about trying to understand and accept the creatureliness that exists within our selves, and what it means to be a human animal, that we might better accommodate our own wildness within the world.

—— Fiona Wright , Guardian Australia

Gutting and gorgeous, The Last Migration is an astounding meditation on love, trauma, and the cost of survival. With soulful prose and deep empathy, Charlotte McConaghy weaves parallel stories of a woman and a world on the brink of devastation, but never without hope. Equal parts love letter and dirge, this is a true force of a book that I read holding my breath from its start to its symphonic finish

—— Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild

At a time when it feels like we're at the end of the world, this novel about a different kind of end of the world serves as both catharsis and escape

—— Harper's Bazaar US

This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairy-tale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend The Last Migration with my whole heart

—— Geraldine Brooks, Author of March

Powerful...Vibrant...Unique... If worry is the staple emotion that most climate fiction evokes in its readers, The Last Migration - the novelistic equivalent of an energizing cold plunge - flutters off into more expansive territory

—— Los Angeles Times

How far do we have to go to escape our pasts and find ourselves? Charlotte McConaghy’s luminous, brilliant novel, set in a future when wildlife is rapidly becoming extinct, is indeed about loss—but what makes it miraculous is that it is also about both the glimpses of hope and the shattering persistence of love, if we are only brave enough to acknowledge them. Written in prose as gorgeous as the crystalline beauty of the Arctic, The Last Migration is deeply moving, haunting, and, yes, important

—— Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You

A gutting portrait of a woman worn down by a world she never quite fit into

—— TIME

A lovely, haunting novel about a troubled woman’s quest to follow the last surviving Arctic terns on their southerly migration. As she tries to make peace with the ghosts of her painful past, she must choose whether she herself wants – or deserves – to survive, in spite of everything she, and all humans, have destroyed and lost

—— Ceridwen Dovey, author of In the Garden of the Fugitives

Beautifully haunting... Spanning oceans and decades, Franny's physical and emotional journeys are at times devastating and, at others, surprisingly, undeniably hopeful... Brimming with stunning imagery and raw emotion, The Last Migration 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

—— Jennifer Oleinik , Shelf Awareness

Transfixing, gorgeously precise...[The] evocation of a world bereft of wildlife is piercing; Franny's otherworldliness is captivating; and her misadventures and anguished secrets are gripping

—— Booklist

A torrent of pure, unmediated fervour . . . an extraordinarily accomplished work for any writer, let alone one who is still a teenager . . . This is writing at its wild and unruly best

—— Dr Rachel Clarke , The Lancet

An extraordinary diary . . . it's a powerful pitch for why the school curriculum needs to be wilded and a reminder of the value of neurodiversity in literature

—— The Times

Rovelli opens windows onto the imagination for all of us

—— Antony Gormley

I always find with Carlo Rovelli's books that there are moments when you get a real hit of understanding -- a jigsaw in your mind that just falls into place

—— Robin Ince

Helgoland is a wonderful guide to the most extraordinary story in physics. It will reset your view of the universe

—— Marcus du Sautoy

Hooked me so hard I read the entire book in one sitting. And then twice more

—— Lisa Feldman Barrett , Chronicle of Higher Education

The old, solid world, if you believed in it at all, breaks into a glorious shimmer of limitless potential

—— Brian Morton , Tablet

Rovelli has an uncanny knack for instilling wonder and explaining complex theories in plain, entertaining ways

—— Irish Times

I'm keen for everyone to read Helgoland: a wonderfully lucid and poetic account of the foundations of quantum physics. It combines a compelling history with Rovelli's own intriguing - and for me very appealing - views about the basis of all things

—— Anil Seth, author of Being You
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