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    Migratory Animals: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Migratory Animals: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Migratory Animals: A Novel
    Ebook349 pages7 hours

    Migratory Animals: A Novel

    By Mary Helen Specht

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Award and the Writer's League of Texas Fiction Award • An Indie Next Selection • An Austin American-Statesman Selects Book

    A powerful debut novel about a group of 30-somethings struggling for connection and belonging, Migratory Animals centers on a protagonist who finds herself torn between love and duty.

    When Flannery, a young scientist, is forced to return to Austin from five years of research in Nigeria, she becomes split between her two homes. Having left behind her loving fiancé without knowing when she can return, Flan learns that her sister, Molly, has begun to show signs of the genetic disease that slowly killed their mother.

    As their close-knit circle of friends struggles with Molly’s diagnosis, Flannery must grapple with what her future will hold: an ambitious life of love and the pursuit of scientific discovery in West Africa, or the pull of a life surrounded by old friends, the comfort of an old flame, family obligations, and the home she’s always known. But she is not the only one wrestling with uncertainty. Since their college days, each of her friends has faced unexpected challenges that make them reevaluate the lives they’d always planned for themselves.

    A mesmerizing debut from an exciting young writer, Migratory Animals is a moving, thought-provoking novel, told from shifting viewpoints, about the meaning of home and what we owe each other—and ourselves.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 20, 2015
    ISBN9780062346049
    Unavailable
    Migratory Animals: A Novel

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    Reviews for Migratory Animals

    3.5/5

    3 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A beautiful, real story of how our lives usually don't turn out the way we'd planned. The characters could walk out of the book.

      My favorite parts were about Alyce and her tapestry. If you read it, you'll see.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the Austin references and the writing was great. I did not connect to the characters, though and was left dissatisfied with the ending.
    • 4/5
      I love the cover of this book and yes, the birds do mean something. It is also the first book where I would personally like to meet all the main characters. This group of friends, two are siblings, are now in their thirties and are at a crossroads in their professional lives and personal ones. The book is narrated by a few different people, so we get different viewpoints. I enjoyed this story, which deals with some important issues such as Huntington disease, depression, climate changes and childbirth. There is one part in this book when the main male characters attend a cooking class that had me laughing out loud. It has been a while since a book has done that, Just typing this makes me smile. There is happiness and sorrow as they try to figure out where they will go from here. Since I liked all the characters some of their choices made me sad. So a good book, well written, very descriptive at times, learn a bit about Nigeria and some wonderful characters.Arc from publisher.
    • 4/5
      Migratory Animals is a beautiful and profound debut by Mary Helen Specht whose own life may or may not be mirrored in the main character Flannery. Flannery has been studying in Nigeria when she finds out her sister Molly has been diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, the same disease that killed their mother, and so she makes the difficult decision to leave the research she loves and her fiancé and return to Austin, Texas, to help Molly. Through beautiful prose Specht brings the readers into the lives of Flan and Molly and their close knit group of friends and the struggles and rather serious life changing decisions that must be made by these 30-something women. While older than the women depicted in this group, I did not have difficulty identifying with each of them or their various problems, each trying to find their own footing in the world. Migratory Animals is brilliantly told through shifting viewpoints allowing the reader to become fully immersed in the characters lives, so much so that when the book ended I still wanted to know more. Migratory Animals is an exceptional debut about what one owes to not only oneself, but also one’s family, of finding out where one belongs, were one calls home. Migratory Animals would be an excellent book discussion group choice.
    • 4/5
      “Migratory Animals,” by Mary Helen Specht, is a psychologically rich and rewarding literary novel about the complex relationships that exist among a group of eight close friends. The group came together during their college days and most have stayed in very close contact ever since. They are four couples: Alyce and Harry, Molly and Brandon, Lou and Steven, and Flannery and Santiago. Two of the women are sisters and two of the men are business partners. These are all very intelligent and creative Generation X adults who enjoy nothing more than hanging out with one another and having a good time. More importantly, however, these are friends who thrive on being able to give and receive the emotional support each other needs in order to make it through the everyday travails of modern life. When the book opens, they are all more than a dozen years past their college days, married (or soon to be married), raising children, and suffering through the economic upheavals of the 2007/2008 Great Recession. All live within fairly close driving distance from one another in Texas…all except one member, Flannery, whose career as a climate research scientist has taken her on a perpetual journey to all corners of the earth. Flannery is the beloved, and sorely missed, eighth member of this tightly knit group. For the past five years, she’s been living in Nigeria. For reasons that are not fully explained in the book, Flan must temporarily fly home to Texas. She leaves behind a country she calls home, a way of life that gives her profound satisfaction, and a native Nigerian man she deeply loves and plans to marry.The book starts when Flannery arrives in Texas and takes the reader through the following eight months. From the day she arrives, Flan is hounded with a constant push and pull of conflicting emotions. She is instantly at home once again with her old set of friends and her former lover, Santiago, but the pull of Africa and her Nigerian lover are overwhelming and unforgettable. To complicate matters more, her sister, Molly, is showing the very subtle beginning symptoms of Huntington’s Disease (HD)—the devastating, hereditary, degenerative brain disorder that killed their mother and upended Flan’s childhood, teen, and young adult years. Dealing with this disease left her scarred with painful memories she’s tried hard to forget. In many ways, Flan’s international scientific career was an escape from her painful past. Seeing her sister embarking on the same tragic path as her mother is almost too much for Flan to endure.I would have enjoyed this book far more had it focused more exclusively on Flannery’s story. Instead, the author devoted considerable space to developing all her secondary characters and giving each a significant issue that they, too, had to deal with, and find emotional support from their friends in resolving. In the end, it felt like a novel with too many main characters. Flan’s story was complete, but I felt shortchanged about the stories of the other secondary characters who seemed to have risen to the level of main characters, as well. The author did provide closure on these other issues, but so much space had been devoted to the character development of these other individuals that their “endings” were less satisfying. The author has a powerful gift for writing prose rich with psychological depth and beauty. I had issues with the book’s plotting and excessive character development. Despite this criticism I enjoyed the book quite a lot and will gladly read any other novel that this fine author produces in the future.