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 soon.Andrea Barrett writes beautifully about very different people who all share several common traits: a desire to know, the ability to closely observe, analyze, and marvel at the wonder of discovery - both personal and scientific. Each of the stories can be read independently, but the true pleasure of this volume comes from reading them all in succession, and seeing characters from one story suddenly reappear in the other.The theme which runs prevalent through the volume is longing - for understanding, solace, company. In the titular, opening story, Max Vigne is a real servant of the map - a young Eglish surveyor in the northern mountains of India during the 1860's (the time of Great Trigonometric Survey, which determined the height of K2, Mount Everest and Kanchenjunga), who feels little connection to the rest of his crew and enormous loneliness in the unmapped, foreign country. The only things which keep him going are his passion of botany fueled by the amount of strange plants in this foreign land, and the letters that he writes to and receives from his wife, Clara - sometimes months late, and sometimes not at all. Max is torn between his love for Clara and their two daughters and what he sees as a slow but unavoidable change within himself - is he the same person to whom Clara was writing the letters months ago? Can he return home to her and resume his previous life? Clara herself plays a major role in the concluding story, The Cure, and wonders about Max, asking the same question.Personalities clash in Barrett's world, like the elderly and poised Polish geologist who goes on an unlikely misadventure with a much younger American woman; a brother and a sister separated at birth, each inhabit a different story and longing for one another, who meet again years later to a surprising result. There is a lot to be savored in this volume, as in the relatively short length of these stories Andrea Barret managed to created characters one can like, relate to and root for - but most importantly understand and care for, as they are not unlike us. Compassion and humanity resonate within this volume of classical stories, and I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.
Beautiful stories, particularly for those with an affinity for science, evolution or botany. I love how the stories stand alone and span multiple eras and geographies, but that the characters interconnect in unexpected ways. Actually they connect across this book, Ship Fever: Stories and The Voyage of the Narwhal, and another book that is in progress. Each story in this book explores how scientific inquiry plays a role in the decisions one makes to carve a future for themselves and sometimes (or through subsequent stories, a glimpse into) the implications and results of those decisions on a life well lived. With it all fresh in my head, I'm moving on to Ship Fever: Stories now.A few quotes I want to note to jog my memory later. (view spoiler)[(pg 69) "He will break it to her gently, he thinks. A hint, at first; a few more suggestions in letters over the coming months; in September he'll raise the subject. By then...Perhaps he'll have more encouragement from Dr. Hooker by then, which he can offer to Clara as evidence that his work is worthwhile. Perhaps he'll understand by then how he might justify his plans to her. For now - what else can he say in this letter? He has kept too much from her, these last months. If his letters were meant to be a map of his mind, a way for her to follow his trail, then he has failed her. Somehow, as summer comes to these peaks and he does his job for the last time, he must find a way to let her share in his journey. But for now all he can do is triangulate the first few points."(pg 97) "He thought back but Bianca, her foot heavy on the accelerator, thought away. From Rose, their mother, their entire past, books and papers and stories and sorrows: let it sink into the ocean. She had her wallet and her sleeping bag and her running shoes and her van; and she drove as if this were the point from which the rest of her life might begin."(pg 117) " 'I have no appetite,' she sighed. 'Not for food, not for work. Not for anything.' I looked at her and wondered what I am except appetite."(pg120) "In that light, across the field, is all I will never have. Next to me is all I will."(pg 174) "It was through Peter that she first understood that the world existed before her, without her. For a few days she could not forgive him for this." (pg 205) "The life she'd led, each of the places she'd called home sending unexpected shoots toward the next, had made her open to almost anything." (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Servants Of The Map (2003)?
I found this book more satisfying than Ship Fever, which won a National Book Award... perhaps because it resurrected characters from that book and added richness and context to their personal histories. I'm a fan of that sort of serialization -- "elliptical family sagas", I guess you'd call them -- having been a long-time reader of Louise Erdrich, a big fan of "Winesburg, Ohio", and before that, a devotee of Stephen King and all his many interconnected Castle Rock and Derry residents.This is a great, satisfying read for anyone interested in naturalism, the history of science and exploration, and 19th century U.S. history. Finding and reading it was a nice little bit of synchronicity for me, personally, since one of its longest stories, "The Cure", is set in the Adirondacks; and I found the book after a summer in the foothills of the Catskills, a drive north through the Adirondacks, a ferry ride across Lake Champlain, and a visit to a used bookstore in Burlington, VT.One last note: "Servants of the Map", and Barrett's Afterword describing its genesis and the ever-extending family tree she's drawn to map out her characters' connections, makes me want to put all my months of genealogy research into my own family to good use. She's helped me recognize the wealth of writing riches I have in my own back yard. Thank you, Ms. Barrett!
—Sue Bridehead (A Pseudonym)
well I had written out a longer review and then couldnt find it the morning I was updating, spent a futile time looking for it so I just summed it up, intending to write more later because I was going to be late for work (I was). But if two people (thanks Mike and Tuck) already like it, do I need to bother?A one liner review is a feat in itself.But does it do justice to this sensitive, comlex book?
—Magdelanye
I loved the title story when I first read it in the Best American Short Stories, and the rest did not disappoint. Barrett successfully hit on two points that make me weak in the knees: she invoked the natural world through passion and profession of her characters, using the specificity of a field guide and the true appreciation of someone who knows her science; and though this is a collection of short stories, characters resurfaced, and the reader was allowed to murmur, "So *that* is what happened to so-and-so..." Beyond this, her delicate treatment of complex human relationships truly appealed to me, and I found myself prepared to read each of these stories in novel-length bits; I was ready to continue on the journey.
—Molly
