Review: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Several years ago, I reluctantly picked up Charlotte McConaghy's debut novel, Migrations. It just didn't seem like the sort of novel I wanted to read. How incredibly wrong I was. Fast forward to this year when, despite Migrations being one of my top ten books for the year when I read it, I was conflicted by the idea of Wild Dark Shore. I bought it but then read everything else but it until finally, something pushed me to pick it up. And once again, I wondered why I hadn't devoured this tense and gripping novel immediately.

Opening with an injured woman rescued from the freezing water around Shearwater Island, this is cli-fi, a thriller, a warning, and a beautifully written literary novel all wrapped in one. Rowan is badly injured and nursed back to health by Dominic Salt, the island and former research base's caretaker, and his three children, Raff, Fen, and Orly. Dominic doesn't trust Rowan. Why would she be coming to Shearwater, this remote island near Antarctica? Rowan doesn't trust Dominic either. She's asking questions about the now abandoned research base and is skeptical about his assertion that all their communications equipment has been destroyed, severing their connection to mainland Australia. While Rowan and Dominic might be wary of each other and the secrets each senses the other is keeping, the Salt children are much more open to this enigmatic woman who has arrived on their shores, especially the youngest child, nine-year-old Orly who has a keen interest in the seeds kept in the seed vault on the island, a vault which is now in danger of imminent collapse due to encroaching sea water. As the sea water continues to rise and the characters have no choice but to wait six weeks for the scheduled arrival of the ship coming to evacuate them and the most vital of the banked seeds, so does the tension in the novel. All five of the characters narrate their own stories, giving glimpses of their pasts, fleshing out their characters, and sharing their tragic losses with the reader.

McConaghy's evocation of a windswept island being inexorably consumed by the sea, the wild life that makes their home on its shores, and the plants that survive in such an inhospitable environment made even more inhospitable by climate change is beautiful. Her slow reveals of each character's secrets, even as they forge deeper relationships to each other keep the reader turning the pages. There is an otherworldly feel to the novel but also a sense of reckoning, both for the characters and for the reader who must acknowledge that this apocalyptic version of the world could be scarily prescient. And although this is a novel grappling with the damage that human beings do to the earth, to the animals and plants around us, to each other, it is also a novel about love and hope and perseverence. Grief winds its way throughout the narrative but so does deep love. This is a stunning read.