Barrett consistently writes books that are so smart, suffused with science and the joy and pain of scientific discovery, yet not forgoing relationship (and its commensurate joys and pains). Her characters are often earnest, if not completely self-aware or emotionally honest, seekers after truths,...
Thank you Joanna for really pushing and pushing for me to read this - you see I do not like short stories! Joanna didn't give up on me b/c she knew what I like in books and she knew this book just could not be missed, despite that it was short stories. If you like short stories, you would probabl...
After a prologue taking place in Beijing, China during events connected to the Tiananmen Square protests, the narrative starts about 10 years back with Grace, an American, telling her story from a viewpoint that matures gradually over the years as she matures, including flashbacks back into her c...
I discovered Andrea Barrett through Ship Fever: Stories, a collection of stories which won the National Book Award in 1996. For some reason I thought that I'd be reading science-fiction, but what I got instead was fiction about science - a rare breed, which I'll hopefully get to reviewing one day...
Simon Camish, an embittered, diffident lawyer in a loveless marriage, would not have particularly noticed Rose Vassiliou had he not been asked to drive her home one night after a dinner party. Yet at one time she had been notorious-her name constantly in the news. Now, separated from her Greek h...
Set in New England, The Forms of Water is a superb exploration of the complexities of family life, grief and the ties that continue to bind us to the past. At the age of 80, Brendan Auberon, a former monk, is now confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home. As a last wish, he is desperate to catch...
"An evocative panorama of America…on the cusp of enormous change" (Newsday) by the National Book Award-winning author of Ship Fever.In the fall of 1916, America prepares for war—but in the community of Tamarack Lake, the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cotta...
DOCTOR: What is it? PATIENT: I have been afraid of noise and strong light for two years. When I’m exposed to these, I feel tense and restless. DOCTOR: Do you have other symptoms? PATIENT: Yes. At times I suffer from palpitati...
This paper was a model of clarity, Richard told his students. It represented everything that science should be. Richard paced in front of the chalkboard, speaking easily and without notes. Like the minor evolutionist Robert Chambers, he had been born hexadactylic; he was s...