This is our third Charlotte McConaghy read, following Migrations (2020) and Once There Were Wolves (2021). We didn’t hesitate in deciding to read her 2025 novel together. Did it live up to expectations? In this one, a widowed dad of three kids is the caretaker of Shearwater, an island close to Antarctica. Though it was an active research site with numerous researchers and a “seed vault,” the island is succumbing to environmental ruin. The entire island is going to be vacated as flooding takes over, drowning the seeds and the facilities. During one storm, a woman washes up on the shore . . . Then, it gets crazy.
Jennifer: So, I think I’d like to ask you two things right away. First, I see that this is categorized as mystery-thriller/suspense. Is that how you’d categorize it? Why or why not? Second, rate it, friend, rate it.
Lara: Ooh, a two-fer! First, I would call this Cli-Fi (climate fiction) which, I think, or I am just going to say, assumes suspense and equal feelings of dread and anticipation.
Second, I love, love, LOVED it. Five full, bright and shiny stars. More if there were more to give.
Jennifer: Wow!
Let me answer the first question, which bleeds into the second–because readers might be wondering if this is for them. I’ve taken a lot of heat lately for my literary snobbery (though I’m not really that bad), but I do kinda shirk from genre fiction like mystery/thriller, suspense. This book, to me, is perfectly literary with a very page-turning plot that gets suspenseful. Like, I couldn’t put it down. (After a bad run of books, this was what I needed.) Yes, to Cli-Fi. Charlotte McConaghy likes nature and environment stuff. I think we might mention that it could be dystopian. Did you get the sense–or is this too obvious to ask–that “back home” was bordering on an environmental nightmare too? Like the world was falling apart?
Lara: I would agree that you aren’t that bad (but you are bad, lol). Yes, this book has the chops that go beyond a popcorn thriller with themes of relationships and family, grief and loss, environmental devastation, while the elements of a psychological thriller pulsates throughout.
Jennifer: Dystopian-lite, yes–but as you noted, it’s rooted in reality. Realism. I think both of us tend to prefer this over the fantastical. I will note (and I say it again below) that I’m reading the fifth book in The Hunger Games series, which is undoubtedly fun. It requires, however, the suspension of disbelief. We have to accept this weird world in which Panem and the Hunger Games are real. In books like Wild Dark Shore, we aren’t suspending our disbelief. We love it because it could happen.
And I thought it was a five-star book too! Both of us! (I mistakenly thought Charlotte McConaghy was Irish because I’ve loved a lot of contemporary Irish novels lately–but she’s Australian.) Flat-out great book.
Okay, so I guess I might ask you what made this a five-star read for you?
Lara: Yay for five star reads! For me, it’s a few things. First, I love a story well told from multiple viewpoints, multi-layered secrets that unfold across the book, and characters that you have to learn to trust as they are learning to trust each other. So, this woman, Rowan, washes ashore where this motherless family is securing the materials that were part of a study in the environmental preservation of plants. The family has no idea why she is here, but she’s here to find her husband–one of the project’s primary researchers and leads. The family quickly learns why she is there and where her husband is, but they cannot tell her. The way McConaghy has them tiptoe around each other, while the elements of the environment and sheer lack of provisions and communication with the outside world and heating and everything requires creating a closeness, an openness, an intimacy that is repeatedly tested.
Am I making sense? Or do I sound drunk with love for this book–which I fully am.
Jennifer: No, I think that’s astute. They possess secrets, they lack the basics, they become intimates. I think there is a bit of a story trope I’m attracted to (I’m about to get mildly literary, but not really because I might be using the word trope incorrectly). I’m a tad enthralled with the idea of the lone survivors, the deserted island except for a few. Good old “Lost,” the original The Planet of the Apes, even The Hunger Games. And this was like literary “Gilligan’s Island.” But there were other reasons. Strong characters, likeable characters, a good dad. This is actually a book about loving one’s children too.
Lara: The lone survivor(s) thing is super compelling. “Gilligan’s Island” is too goofy of a comparison, but I get what you are saying.
Jennifer: If you were to identify the big thematic questions this book is asking, what might you say? I’m going to put mine out there right away and I’ll discuss in a minute. I think this book is really, really, really about mourning. How do we deal with our heartbreak?
This quote says a lot:
“But here is the nature of life. That we must love things with our whole selves, knowing they will die.”
Lara: How dare you take the quote I loved this most! Ha ha. So, yes, this book is absolutely about grief and loss and preparing for the new shape or way of things after surviving a devastating loss. It’s also about how we show up in the world and what role we play as global citizens.
“Maybe we will drown or burn or starve one day, but until then we get to choose if we’ll add to that destruction or if we will care for each other.”
Jennifer: Yeah, though I might not fully embrace this idea, I think it’s super important to consider: do we love others, if the end is inevitably destruction? Or, why bother loving?
I won’t give it all away, but we discover that Dominic, the one most obviously in mourning (having lost his wife and now being the sole parent of three kids on a crazy island), is not the only one mourning. Rowan, the mysterious woman, is trying to recover from profound losses. The three kids–Raff, Fen, and Orly–are also mourning. I’ll just give the example of Orly, the youngest. They are packing up what’s salvageable to leave the island, and Orly–who is a bit of a boy-wonder in his understanding of plants–is very, very thoughtful about the idea of picking and choosing which plant life to preserve, since only a limited amount of seeds can be salvaged. He is a child without a mother–and he immediately clings to Rowan–but he also mourns the loss of the environment.
There are many losses on the way, and the mourning over the natural world haunts the whole book.
Let’s just repeat this notion: this is a beautifully written book, sentence-by-sentence. As I look through the book again, I’m really struck by the visual imagery. The shore is covered by the bodies of sleeping seals. The characters all live in a lighthouse, the remaining shelter from the sea. Orly is precocious but still talks like a boy.
Another great thing is the mystery I get all squirmy about. I’m turning the pages because all of the characters are hiding secrets–and it’s killer.
Lara: Totally agree. This book swallowed me whole. I didn’t want it to end.
Jennifer: And what else are you reading?
Lara: So much! Let’s see. Heavy stuff like Han Kang’s We Do Not Part and Elif Sheif’s There are Rivers In the Sky. I also re-read Alison Espach’s The Wedding People for a book club and liked it just as much the second time. Oprah’s Book Club just picked Dream State by Erich Puchner. The writing is fantastic but I am not sure how I feel about what took place and the authenticity of the choices the characters made. What about you?
Jennifer: Well, I did rush out and get Book #5 in The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping. This one is about Haymitch. All I can say is that I CAN’T WAIT to read it tonight! I’m also plodding through Tolstoy’s War & Peace over the course of the year, emphasis on plodding. I’m reading Carrie Brownstein’s Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, which might be the best title I’ve ever heard. I also read Han King’s We Do Not Part–but I wanted to love it more than I actually did.
Next Up!
We will be reviewing This Is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer.