Author: Charlotte McConaghy
# of Pages: 300 (hardback)
Genre: Adult, Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon. Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late―and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.
Review: McConaghy has written yet another great book.
But most noticeably, there's a huge climate/nature/animal conservation and appreciation element to this book that seems to be now be a running theme for all her books. This book is actually paced very slowly, and there's a lot of descriptions of the animals on the island and seeds in the seed bank that don't necessarily drive the plot forward. It wasn't surprising to hear that McConaghy visited, researched, and based the setting off Macquarie Island, and reading this book knowing that this is ultimately an ode to that island explains why there's so much focus on this rather than the mystery it's pitched as.
However, surprisingly I actually liked the simultaneously despairing but hopeful slice of life story that allows the reader to get to know Rowan, Dominic, and his children. The whole book could have focused more on these people building relationships with each other (focus on themes of family/parent-child relationships, trauma, etc.) and I would have been happy (4+ stars).
What did bother me was the first and third person POV switching. The rapid switching between 5 characters means short chapters, but this could have been told equally effectively in omniscient third person.
Most of the mystery element is created by omission; the characters collectively know the full story but will trickle truth it to the reader. I don't remember much about Migrations after 4 years but IIRC, they similarly used this story telling strategy. Not a fan, and on the mystery aspect and POV switching (especially in the beginning before I became invested in the characters, I was almost going to rate this book 2-3 stars.
The way children were depicted in Migrations felt unrealistic to me, and I feel similarly about the 9 year old child (Orly) in this book, especially in the beginning. This improved a bit later on in the story, but the older children and adult character felt more authentic.
In the end, this book lands somewhere between a high 3 stars and a low 4 stars. I couldn't put this book down and blazed through the latter half. I'd recommend this book, especially if you're interested in a slower paced, story with a focus on beauty and fragility of nature.
No comments:
Post a Comment