Migrations

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

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

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

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

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 work of first-rate climate fiction, also a clever reimagining of Moby-Dick . . . Sea yarns have been the exclusive literary domain of men for far too long, and McConaghy deserves extra credit for sounding the oceanic depths of the female soul.

New York Times

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.

Los Angeles Times

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

True and affecting, elegiac and imminent . . . the fractured timeline fills each chapter with suspense and surprises, parcelled out so tantalisingly that it took disciplined willpower to keep from skipping down each page to see what happens.

Washington Post

Migrations moves at a fast, exciting clip, motored as much by love for “creatures that aren’t human” as by outrage at their destruction.

Wall Street Journal

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

True and affecting, elegiac and imminent...The fractured timeline fills each chapter with suspense and surprises, parceled out so tantalizingly that it took disciplined willpower to keep from skipping down each page to see what happens... Franny charts our course through a novel that is efficient and exciting, indicting but forgiving, and hard but ultimately hopeful

Washington Post

McConaghy creates a detailed portrait of a woman on the cusp of collapse, consumed with a world that is every bit as broken as she is. Migrations offers a grim window into a future that doesn’t feel very removed from our own. In understanding how nature can heal us, McConaghy underlines why it urgently needs to be protected.

Time

A nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over.

New York Times Book Review

Gorgeous...A personal reckoning that cuts right to the heart. This beautiful novel is an ode-if not an elegy-to an endangered planet and the people and places we love

Literary Hub

A good nautical adventure...The Last Migration moves at a fast, exciting clip, motored as much by love for 'creatures that aren't human' as by outrage at their destruction

The Wall Street Journal

An aching and poignant book, and one that’s pressing in its timeliness.

Guardian

A lyrical ode to our vanishing wilderness. When grappling with ecological collapse on a global scale, the stakes are literally epoch-ending, and in McConaghy’s hands, they are matched with the kind of heart-in-your-mouth high drama that pushes a reviewer to read long past lights out.

Sydney Morning Herald

An ode to our disappearing natural world

Newsweek

You can practically hear the glaciers cracking to pieces and the shrill yelps of the circling terns

Vulture

An adventure of a wilder sort.

Vogue

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.

Elle

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

Stunning . . . Migrations was written for the Earth’s wild creatures. Franny Stone is a compelling character . . . an Ishmael of sorts.

The Australian

McConaghy’s debut novel is dreamy, achingly sad, and a likely accurate prediction of what is to come. It is a story about being human in a world where more than just the ocean is treacherous.

SA Weekend

McConaghy’s debut novel is dreamy, achingly sad, and a likely accurate prediction of what is to come. It is a story about being human in a world where more than just the ocean is treacherous.

Literary Hub

Gorgeous . . . A personal reckoning that cuts right to the heart. This beautiful novel is an ode – if not an elegy – to an endangered planet and the people and places we love.

The Booktopian

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

Anna Funder

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

This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairytale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend Migrations with my whole heart.

Gerladine Brooks

An extraordinary novel . . . as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I’ve ever read.

Emily St John Mandel

Migrations 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

Migrations is deeply moving, haunting, and, yes, important.

Caroline Leavitt

Gutting and gorgeous, Migrations 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.

Julia Fine

This keening lament of an adventure is compelling.

Guardian UK