The Migration
by Helen Marshall
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"Creepy and atmospheric, evocative of Stephen King's classic Pet Sematary, The Migration is a story of sisterhood, transformation, and the limitations of love, from a thrilling new voice in Canadian fiction. When I was younger I didn't know a thing about death. I thought it meant stillness, a body gone limp. A marionette with its strings cut. Death was like a long vacation--a going away. Storms and flooding are worsening around the world, and a mysterious immune disorder called JI2 has begun show more to afflict the young. Seventeen-year-old Sophie Perella is about to begin her senior year of high school in Toronto when her little sister, Kira, is diagnosed. Their parents' marriage falters under the strain, and Sophie's mother, Charlotte, takes the girls to Oxford, England, to live with their Aunt Irene. An epidemiologist obsessed with relics of the Black Death, Irene works with a Centre that specializes in treating people with JI2. She is a friend to Sophie, and offers a window into a strange and ancient history of human plague and recovery. Sophie just wants to understand what's happening now; she wants her sweet, goofy sister to be back to normal. But as JI2 mortality rates climb, and reports emerge of bodily tremors in the dead, it becomes clear there is nothing normal about this condition. Desperate to protect Kira, cut off from the world of her youth, Sophie faces an unimaginable choice: let go of the sister she knows, or embrace something terrifying and new. Tender and chilling, unsettling and hopeful, The Migration is a story of a young woman's dawning awareness of mortality and the power of the human heart to thrive in cataclysmic circumstances."-- show lessTags
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Member Reviews
(What? This is not evocative of Pet Semetary at all!)
A tough read, one of those reads that is tough precisely because it does the things it sets out to do and does them well. A beautiful near future apocalyptic tale of death and loss and grief in the face of rising natural and social catastrophe, the cruelest thing this does, beyond making characters you come to love go through hell, is offer out a richly imagined tendril of hope through transformation. Damn you, Helen Marsall. That hurts. Well done.
A tough read, one of those reads that is tough precisely because it does the things it sets out to do and does them well. A beautiful near future apocalyptic tale of death and loss and grief in the face of rising natural and social catastrophe, the cruelest thing this does, beyond making characters you come to love go through hell, is offer out a richly imagined tendril of hope through transformation. Damn you, Helen Marsall. That hurts. Well done.
"Memory is a tricky thing. It isn't a ruler, a hard, straight line for measuring the past, the passage of days, months, years."
The basic plot of this book is - “... people with J12 are dying-but when they do, biologically, the bodies keep going, they keep—“. “Changing.” It’s an intellectual ‘zombie’ story, with climate change as a part of the tale. And it’s well written and kind of deep! For 150 pages or so. Then, right past the halfway point, toward the end of part two, the ‘change’ happens, and the book goes ka-thunk. Even with the biological explanation given on these pages, I call BS to the whole 'nymph' development. Total BS. All the good will that the author had bought in me went flying out the door. Really, show more nymphs? C'mon...
p.s. - I LOVED reading “The Paper Bag Princess” to my daughter when she was young! Special to see it mentioned in here!
“Sometimes memory is a noose. It loops back on itself, pulling tight round your throat.” show less
The basic plot of this book is - “... people with J12 are dying-but when they do, biologically, the bodies keep going, they keep—“. “Changing.” It’s an intellectual ‘zombie’ story, with climate change as a part of the tale. And it’s well written and kind of deep! For 150 pages or so. Then, right past the halfway point, toward the end of part two, the ‘change’ happens, and the book goes ka-thunk. Even with the biological explanation given on these pages, I call BS to the whole 'nymph' development. Total BS. All the good will that the author had bought in me went flying out the door. Really, show more nymphs? C'mon...
p.s. - I LOVED reading “The Paper Bag Princess” to my daughter when she was young! Special to see it mentioned in here!
“Sometimes memory is a noose. It loops back on itself, pulling tight round your throat.” show less
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Author Information
18+ Works 385 Members
Helen Marshall is the author of Gifts for the One Who Comes After, which won a World Fantasy Award in 2015. (Bowker Author Biography)
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2019
- Epigraph
- For a while now, Duck had had a feeling.
"Who are you? What are you up to, creeping along behind me?"
"Good," said Death, "you finally noticed me."
-Wolf Erlbruck Duck, Death and the Tulip - First words
- When I was younger, I used to play dead.
That was back before I knew what dead meant - what it really meant. But when you're a kid you play at things you don't understand. You play doctor. You play house. At te... (show all)n I didn't know a thing about death. I thought it meant stillness, a body gone limp. A marionette with its strings cut. Death was like a long vacation - a going away. -Before - Publisher's editor
- Betts, Amanda
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.6
- Canonical LCC
- PR9199.M355
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 115
- Popularity
- 281,754
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.47)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 2
