“The clues to what?” I asked the first time. “To life. They’re hidden everywhere.” I’ve been looking for them ever since, and they have led me here, to the boat I will spend the rest of my life aboard. Because one way or another, when I reach Antarctica and my migration is finished, I have decided to die.
Franny Stone Lynch is a futuristic main character searching for her ancestry and struggling with her background. Her personal story runs parallel to her desire to follow the almost extinct Arctic terns from Greenland to Antarctica. She employs ornithological knowledge and a mercurial, sometimes volatile personality to gain access to a fishing boat among career fishers. Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani (Inuit for raven), reluctantly takes Franny aboard, thinking that tracking the birds will help his crew find more herring.
McConaghy conveys several themes in addition to the most obvious one, the results of climate change, the extinction of animals, and human interference with nature. We are encouraged to wonder about migration patterns of the Arctic tern and possibly all birds. Then again, the migration of Franny and her ancestors—from Ireland to Australia and back again- also leaves the reader pondering why humans move. I think the concept of crime and the inherent characteristics of those with criminal backgrounds are integral to the story. Some of the questions in my mind as reading were:
Should it be criminal to catch fish as their numbers deplete? What about killing other animals for human consumption?
Is there a difference between the value of human lives and the lives of other creatures?
Are human brains genuinely superior to other living beings?
Do humans possess the strong instincts that are obvious in other species?
How does grief affect the human brain?
I am not sure this a cautionary tale or a political statement, but it was a worthwhile read—different, refreshing, and thought-provoking to the level of mind rattling.
