Ship Fever - Softcover

Barrett, Andrea

4.05

4,136 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002257963 ISBN 13: 9780002257961

Publisher: Flamingo, 1999

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Exceptional tales of emancipation and evolution at the birth of the modern era. Winner of US National Book Award.

’Andrea Barrett’s work stands out for its sheer intelligence. The overall effect is quietly dazzling.’ New York Times

Set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century, this elegant collection of stories take their impulse from the world of science. Interweaving historical and fictional characters, they illuminate the secret passions of those driven by a devotion to, and an intimate acquaintance with, the natural world.

’Barrett’s stories fascinate...she pulls us into them as into fast-moving water.’ San Francisco Chronicle

’Beautiful stories about the wonder and work of science. The title novella describes the horrors of typhus in the newly arrived Irish immigrants to Quebec, and suggests that, in epidemics, medicine is more a piece of politics than a form of science. In Barrett’s hands, science is transformed from hard and known fact into malleable, strange and thrilling fictional material.’ Boston Globe

’An extraordinary story collection. Barrett blends a sure grasp of the history and method of science into each of her evocative tales.’ Chicago Tribune

’Many of these stories are set in the late nineteenth century, the adolescence of modern science. Barrett’s women are often scoffed at for their love of learning. Some try to use science as a currency with which to buy acceptance in a male-dominated world. But no character relates only to his or her work. Barrett builds her fictions like stones thrown into prose ponds: science is the stone, while human dramas, personal and social, are the concentric rings that radiate beautifully outward.’ Newsday

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Review:

In 1764, two Englishwomen set out to prove that swallows--contrary to the great Linnaeus's belief--do not hibernate underwater. But they must be patient and experiment in secret, such actions being inappropriate for the female of the species. In 1862, a hopeless naturalist heads off for yet another journey, though he can't seem to rid his conscience of the thousands of animals that have already died in his service. In 1971, a pregnant young woman, ill at ease with her socially superior husband and his stepchildren, hears of a Tierra del Fuegan taken hostage by the commander of the Beagle in 1835. This unwilling specimen was, we read, "captured, exiled, re-educated; then returned, abused by his family, finally re-accepted. Was he happy? Or was he saying that as a way to spite his captors? Darwin never knew."

Many of the characters who populate Andrea Barrett's National Book Award winning collection, Ship Fever, feel similarly displaced in the world. They long to prove themselves in both science and love, but are often thwarted by gender, social position, or the prevailing order. In "The Behaviour of the Hawkweeds", the wife of a genetics professor has learned that each narrative of discovery is matched by one, if not more, "in which science is not just unappreciated, but bent by loneliness and longing." Barrett's astonishing tales of ambition and isolation convey the meaning and feeling behind the patterns--scientific and emotional--but slip free of easy closure. The two women in "Rare Bird", like the swallows, depart England for more conducive climes, or so the brother of one believes. The reader is left to hope, and imagine. Much has been made of Andrea Barrett's interlacing of history, knowledge, and fact--and rightly so. But equal attention should be paid to the brilliant serenity and exactitude of her style. --Kerry Fried

Review:

‘A truly stylish book’
Penelope Fitzgerald

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