Floreana by Midge Raymond, Review: Wildlife infused drama
Floreana by Midge Raymond is a wildlife-conservation infused historical drama exploring challenging topics inspired by real events. Read my review.
Floreana Publisher Synopsis
On the Galápagos Islands, the lives of two women—a century apart—converge in the most startling ways in a historical novel of desperate love, secrets, and deception by the author of My Last Continent.
After ten years away to build a family, Mallory returns to Floreana Island in the Galápagos, and to Gavin, the mentor with whom she had a long-ago affair. Their project is to build nests to revive the vulnerable penguin population. But Mallory doesn’t dare tell Gavin why she’s really come back. Then she discovers old journals hidden in a lava cave—confessions of another woman who needed to disappear.
In 1929, Dore Strauch left the life she knew to create a new one with the man she loved. On remote Floreana they’re beholden to no one but each other. Until the arrival of strangers, settlers in their paradise. Suddenly, Dore realizes that it’s no longer the refuge she imagined. And that amid the island’s fragile beauty, people can do the most terrible things.
A gripping reimagining of a true story, Floreana intertwines the emotional journeys of two women bound by dark secrets, the want of escape, and the lengths to which they’ll go to find their place in the world. that may or may not still be buried there.
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My Review
Midge Raymond’s My Last Continent was a novel I found memorably compelling. Her writing style in particular, a literary narration of a scientific mind’s interaction with the world, was something I found striking. Keen for more of that, and instinctively drawn to historical fiction inspired by true events, I was eager to dive into her latest full-length fiction release Floreana.
” Can one experience paradise if no one is watching?”
Once again, this story’s settings are vividly depicted, with the natural environment, flora, fauna, and stifling heat of the Galapagos particularly evocative. The author’s passion for, and experience with, the world’s endangered penguin populations, shines bright from the pages also.
“Conservation, like parenting, gives us a chance to change the future, to create the future.”
The animal kingdom is not the only realm in which Midge Raymond explores challenging topics. Through the alternating, narrative perspectives of present day Mallory (first-person) and Dore’s (epistolary, 1929) she delves deep into the human condition, with a focus on the expectations placed on women — both, by society and themselves.
“I am not alone here on Floreana, yet I find that being so utterly dependent on another, to put one’s life in another’s hands so completely, is worse than being alone. It would be a blessing to choose loneliness.”
With parallels to the mating and chick-rearing strategies of the penguins Mallory and her team are monitoring, Raymond explores relationships and motherhood, life’s meaning and its fragility, and inevitably, the burden of grief.
Story pacing
But was Floreana all that I had hoped for? Was it ‘gripping’, as promised in the synopsis? Unfortunately, not really.
Despite being pre-disposed to enjoying alternating narrative timelines and viewpoints, there was an imbalance between this pairing that stifled the story pacing and progression, and this thwarted my emotional engagement. Also, despite feeling sympathy for the characters, since I had foreseen the eventual twists / reveals in this novel very early on, I was underwhelmed by this novel’s conclusion.
There is much to admire within Midge Raymond’s Floreana, but as a story it just did not deliver the level of catharsis or closure I had hoped for.
My Rating
Story 3 / 5 ; The Writing 4 / 5 — Overall 3.5
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* My receiving a pre-publication digital copy of Floreana from the publisher for review purposes did not impact the expression of my honest opinions above.