parents and their high expectations. Then there are their friends, members of their extended family and their servants. The novel along with the major and many minor characters meanders all over the place.  The story travels to New York, Kansas, Vermont, Delhi, Allahabad, Goa, Venice, Mexico and many other places in between. It also seamlessly traverses into magical realism and back. With nuanced writing replete with vivid descriptions and stylistic prose, the novel is an ambitious work of art, sometimes funny, sometimes moving, delving into the themes of post colonialism, privilege, prejudice, racism, classism, immigrant identity, pursuit of success and trauma.  The book could perhaps have been edited, but that would deprive the reader of the rich tapestry which is such an intrinsic part of this novel. 

This is Desai’s third novel.  I remember enjoying her first novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. It was fun noticing the references to her first novel in this book.  Her second novel Inheritance of Loss won the Booker.  I did enjoy that book. Some of the themes explored in that novel appear here as well.

The Coffman Library purchased The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny in November, and if not checked out, the book can be found on the Recent & Relevant shelves until the end of December, after which it will be placed in the Fiction section. 

revolution of 1848, when their republican stance was not popular with the French authorities. Gauguin’s early childhood was spent in Lima in the home of his maternal great-uncle, who had served as viceroy of Peru, and in retirement presided over his silver mines and sugar plantations from a fortress-like palace. Paul was seven years old when he returned to the gray skies of Europe. He had difficulty learning French and adapting to “civilized” life, calling himself “a savage from Peru.” Gauguin eventually settled into a career as a stockbroker, married a Danish girl, and fathered five children. But he continued painting, becoming an influential member of the Impressionist, then the post-Impressionist and Symbolist schools. Gauguin’s evolution as an artist, well-traced by Prideaux, would require another review.

The stock market crash of 1882 was disastrous for Gauguin. Decades of penury ensued: he traveled from place to place, trying to earn enough from his art to survive and support his wife and children. In one bizarre incident, he lived and painted with Van Gogh in Arles during the time the Dutch artist cut off his ear. At another point, Gauguin moved with his family to Denmark, but he could not earn a living there. His wife stayed, getting support from her family, but their marriage was not dissolved: before Gauguin’s first trip to Tahiti, he wrote her that he hoped for them all to be reunited in three years. He never saw them again.

Gauguin first travelled to Tahiti as an ambassador for the so-called “civilizing mission” of French colonial propaganda. He was quickly disillusioned by the imposition of European customs and morality on Polynesian culture. A colonial exploiter? On the contrary, Gauguin fought for the rights of Indigenous people, exposing French injustices and corruption in the Tahitian newspapers. Penniless, ailing but still artistically (and amorously) adventurous, Gauguin continued producing works in various media, including woodcuts, sculpture, and carving. He died in 1903, probably as the result of a heart attack and complications from an old injury. The rumor of syphilis was quelled when an excavation of a well next to Gauguin’s hut discovered several teeth. When they were tested, no trace of anti-syphilis medication was found.

In conclusion, this rich biography illuminates the extraordinary life and work of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde. If nothing else, skim through it and enjoy the sumptuous reproductions. ​

Migrations features the troubled Franny Stone who, in a not-so-future world where the oceans are empty of fish and all birds are disappearing due to climate change, follows the last Arctic terns in the world on their final migration from Greenland to Antarctica (the longest bird migration known). But the increasingly unbalanced Franny is not who she seems. Her drive is inspiring even when the hope of success is miniscule, and the path is treacherous.

Once There Were Wolves also addresses the human impact on environments. In the remote Scottish Highlands a landscape is dying because of a missing link in the ecosystem’s survival chain: wolves. Against the vocal and violent protests of Highlanders—killers of these predators that decimated their livestock—biologist Inti Flynn and her crew reintroduce 14 Canadian gray wolves into the area. What follows is murder and mayhem and perhaps insanity…

In all three of McConaghy’s books, the human characters have unique savant-level skills that make them very strange. Yet you fall in love so deeply that your fear for them as the stories roll along is very real. And you may never learn as much about seals, insects, plants, Arctic terns and wolves than in these three books.

Yet it’s the nonhuman characters of the natural world—animals, land, oceans, trees, etc.—that star here. Perhaps it’s because of how effectively the author evokes the sense that it’s already too late. The threat in each book is already at the brink of changing our world forever. She brings this dystopic future so close that we don’t question our world is bound for collapse tomorrow…if not today…or yesterday.

The stories do not rely on each other, so there’s no order to enjoy these books in. I read them Shores, Wolves and Migrations (backwards by release dates). The writer perhaps grows in skill somewhat from the first to the most recent, but I’d suggest you just get to the library and check out any of these three amazing books that may still be available.

All three of these books are now part of the Coffman collection, living on the Recent & Relevant shelves for the next few months; after they will be shelved together in Fiction under McConaghy.