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Dec 16, 2009

Sara rated it:

Once I got started, I found it hard to put down this collection of short stories. I especially liked Barrett's weaving together of actual/factual scientific situations with fictionalized stories. My personal favorite in the collection is "The Marburg Sisters." This story doesn't combine reality and fiction in the same way as the others. In fact there was something about the story that put me in mind of "Divisidero." Perhaps it is my recent reading of the novel that made More...

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Jan 13, 2012

kristin rated it:

I picked this up at the library booksale because I enjoyed Voyage of the Narwhal and the author's approach to historical fiction. I didn't like Ship Fever quite as much, but it's very well-written. I found some of the stories very distressing---mostly in the extremes some of the characters go to in the name of science. But the stories were interesting in the way they incorporate themes of biology and/or natural sciences.

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Apr 08, 2008

Candice rated it:

I put this on my "to read" list after reading The Air We Breathe as some of the same characters are in both books. This is a book of short stories. The title story takes place in 1847 and is based on a real event. The potato famine in Ireland has forced many of its starving citizens to emigrate to the U.S. and Canada. Many of the immigrants are suffering from "ship fever" or typhus, and a hospital is set up for them on Grosse Isle in Canada. But the number of people aff More...

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Feb 19, 2009

Angele rated it:

Barrett's fascination with science and scientists--the real and imagined, the great and obscure--is the common link in this book of exceptional stories. Fresh insights into Linneaus, Mendel, and Darwin will haunt the reader as deeply as the struggles of Barrett's fictional Laughlin Grant and Nora Kynd in the title novella--in which doctors, patients, and social crusaders battle ignorance and prejudice along with the "black fever" brought by Irish immigrants to 1840's Canada.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jul 05, 2008

Lisa rated it:

The writing is lovely, nearly perfect. The construction of the individual vignettes are solid as can be. She has a wonderful sense of narrative and dialog. However.

I wanted so much for the vignettes to be connected by something more than the myriad ways in which good people fail as scientists. The themes seemed to be inappropriate love, gender discrimination, hubris, lack of inspiration, demanding families, etc, ad nauseam. For me, it was immensely depressing. She may have meant to h More...

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Mar 03, 2008

Jocelyn rated it:

With these stories, Andrea Barrett stepped onto the pedestal of my heroes. Her attention to craft is simply superb: the way she transfers consciousness from one character to another; her lucid, compact descriptions; the humanity which her characters possess. I want to write like this someday.

Perhaps what I admire most is Barrett's subjects: science stuff, not normally intriguing to the English geek. Yet, Barrett obviously has a deep interest in science and so writes about the people More...

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Jan 16, 2012

sarah rated it:

History and science seamlessly merge in this beautifully written collection of tales. Barrett’s narrative spans decades of scientific discovery, while incorporating an intricately constructed glimpse of each character’s life. Though the stories are somewhat disjointed, there is a subtle harmony in her depiction of the duality of love and science. From a woman’s nostalgic recollection of her grandfather’s time with Mendel to the erratic tale of The Marburg Sisters, the measured intermingling of f More...

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Feb 25, 2011

Holly rated it:

In early 1847, the young Quebec city doctor, Lauchlin Grant, struggles to extract a living from his boring practice and pines over his childhood sweetheart, Susannah. She is now the wife of a prominent journalist, Arthur Adam Rowley, who has charged Lauchlin with her care, while he travels in Europe to report on the ghastly potato famine in Ireland and his predictions for its effects on immigration.

Even as Rowley's letters are read at home, waves of starving Irish land at Gr More...

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Feb 02, 2010

Trane rated it:

I liked a lot of the stories in Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever, and I generally liked the conceit of the collection as well — i.e. a group of stories centered around the world of science, many of which take place in the 19th century. The stories involve, in one way or another, Mendel and genetics, Linnaeus and his followers, experiments to disprove the hypothesis that swallows hibernate under water during the winter, Alfred Wallace and the speculative collection of biological specimens, and the Ir More...

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Jan 04, 2012

Derek rated it:

Why oh why did I not come to Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever earlier? The familiarity of the first story in the collection, "The Behavior of the Hawkweeds," leads me to believe that a thoughtful instructor introduced Barrett to me some time ago, but for whatever reason it's taken me this long to get around to reading the whole collection.

Glad I did though, however late. So few authors write historical/scientific fiction as well as Barrett, and her command over setting and chara More...

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Jul 22, 2010

Cat rated it:

The title novella is mind-blowingly good. Barrett describes the Irish Potato Famine and immigration into Canada. Grosse Isle, where the immigrants were "handled," saw the deaths of thousands of starving and ailing immigrants. Barrett's restrained voice and stunned narrative perspectives (of a doctor newly come to help with the epidemic, of a typhus victim who recovers and begins working as a nurse) make the intensity and horrors of the experience even more apparent. She uses " More...

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Dec 16, 2009

Karen rated it:

Particularly liked the story "Rare Bird," about a woman trying to educate herself as a naturalist while struggling against the social rules imposed on Victorian women. The title story is about a young doctor who goes to work at Canada's quarantine island where thousands upon thousands emigrants fleeing the Irish Potato Famine arrived bringing a typhus epidemic with them. Grim and inspiring.

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Dec 17, 2009

Liz rated it:

Hey all you scientists, you should read this. Excellent short stories and one novella, which relate to significant events in natural history. Barrett's characters cross paths with everyone from Mendel to Linnaeus, collect exotic birds in the jungles, and experience a typhus epidemic. It's good for non-scientists too. A worthy winner of the National Book Award.

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Mar 04, 2009

Annie rated it:

Three stories stand out in this collection by Andrea Barrett--"Rare Bird", "Birds with no Feet", and the title story "Ship Fever". Barrett effortlessly weaves together historical events and people with fictional ones, so that the reader never knows which is which.

"Rare Bird" is a perfectly constructed narrative describing a scientifically-minded woman's search to be taken seriously by her eighteenth century male colleagues. When she meets anot More...

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Jul 21, 2008

Suzette rated it:

I would give 4 stars to the main story "Ship Fever" and 3 stars to the other stories in this book. Ship Fever is about the Irish imigration through Canada (Grosse Island) in the 1800s. It was a beautifully written piece of historical fiction and makes you want to go read more about this horrible period of history.

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Sep 30, 2007

Joanna rated it:

This was the most fabulous short story collection I have ever read. I loved loved this book. Every story was beautifully written and engrossing. All of them connected to natural history in some way, which kept a flow to the book even though the stories were not connected to each other in any other way.

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 15, 2007

Sandra rated it:

This collection is excellent--smooth prose, a clean line of action. Ship Fever is an especially good choice for those who wish to "transdiscourse" and pull in information about science, historical figures, etc. to narratives and have the information work gracefully within the context of character and story.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 17, 2009

Brenda rated it:

If you had asked me what I thought of this book when I was halfway through it, I would have said, "Meh." The stories were generally workmanlike: not bad, but not great, either. The addition of historical scientific figures, and the author's interest in the accumulation of knowledge and the scientific method, added a certain signature to the writing, but didn't seem to take it to the next level.

Then I read the last story—really a novella—for which the book was named. It swit More...

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Jun 22, 2009

Karl rated it:

There's been a lot of talk lately about a fourth culture that would put science and the humanities in productive conversation. There's plenty of art that does this, for example, the work of Steve Kurtz or Eduardo Kac. I know of some literature that does this too, and not only Paradise Lost: Richard Powers' The Goldbug Variations, in which DNA is a great symbolic ediface, comes to mind, as do the several episodes in Byatt's Frederica Tetrology that concern artificial intelligence, "deep gram More...

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Sep 22, 2010

Austin rated it:

National Book Award-winning stories, all about scientists, many historical. Andrea Barrett is one of the best, most intelligent, and most sincere contemporary writers of realist fiction. Literature that appears vividly to the senses and brings characters to life, to life L'Chaim.

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Jan 17, 2010

Grass_Roots rated it:

This beautifully written collection of short stories is infused with a sense of wonder in the biological sciences. The stories are peopled by legendary minds like Darwin, Mendel and Linnaeus, as well as an imagined 1700s ornithologist who hides her identity with a male pseudonym, and a pair of modern biologists who find illicit love during an island experiment. In the historically-based title story, survivors of the Irish Potato Famine come to dock in North America sick with a deadly disease, a More...

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Jun 04, 2011

Mary rated it:

Andrea Barrett's collection of short stories traverses the line between science and love, highlighting for sensitive readers how passionate and dispassionate, dangerous and safe, they both can be. Barrett sets most of the stories in the 19th century, when men (and women) pursued true knowledge with the abandon of lusty lovers. The results, as each of the stories demonstrates, are mixed. A couple of the stories fall flat; the others require patience as they move along slowly, with all the detail More...

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May 02, 2011

Nicole rated it:

This book was good. I know this author is acclaimed and all but I am not particularly fond of what she wrote about, but I really enjoyed the underlying symbolism. I really like her writing style. Her writing just flowed as she told each story, I never felt lost. I do wish that she would expand a bit on some stories because it felt like she just would leave a story when it wasn’t finished and she would leave a lot open to the reader’s interpretation. Maybe that is what the author is wanting. Ove More...

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Jun 13, 2010

Ferox rated it:

Short stories about lost people, linked by Barrett's interest in natural philosophy and famous naturalists - in "The Behavior of the Hawkweeds" a woman uses Mendel's letters as her selling point, in "Rare Bird" an 18th century woman corresponds with Linnaeus but breaks free to research for herself, another woman follows in Darwin's footsteps in "Soroche". It becomes slightly ludicrous: who will be next? Alfred Russel Wallace? And yes, a 19th century naturalist emula More...

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Jan 31, 2011

Leah rated it:

This is a collection of short stories that I thought, from the blurb on the back, were all different stories of people on a boat fleeing the potato famine in Ireland in the 1800's, but this only applied to the story of the title. The rest of the stories were on various subjects with science and scientific breakthrough's being the common thread.
The story of the title was the last one in the book, so you begin with the other very short stories first, some of which are only 10 pages long. Shi More...

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Sep 29, 2009

Chrissie rated it:

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 probably give it 5 stars. The last story Ship Fever was longer and that cinched it for me.

Science and history come alive in the fictional story Barrett weaves around the true facts! Here one sees th More...

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Nov 17, 2008

Jeffrey rated it:

A fellow bus-rider lent me this book to break up the non-fiction I wasn't getting through in my reading (slow reading? non-reading?) of Democracy in America. I tore through it in a couple of days; really couldn't put it down!

Author Andrea Barrett includes several short stories in this volume, all with a historical, naturalist/science bend to them. Whether we discover a connection with Mendel or Linnaeus or ponder the same mysteries they did, we get inserted into their lives in an interest

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Oct 02, 2008

Kristen rated it:

This is very unusual and very original for a short fiction collection. Every story is in some way about biology, ecology and naturalists. Linnaeus, Darwin, and Mendel make frequent appearances. Yet at the same time, all of the stories are made of the same stuff of most modern literary fiction -- sex, adultery, disappointment, middle age. The characters are making order from chaos of natural world while their internal worlds -- relationships, family life, hearts, and minds -- unravel.

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Dec 06, 2008

Julie rated it:

There was something about Barrett’s writing style that drew me into the stories, which prevented me from putting the book down. I only stopped, because I was two tired to finish reading it. Barrett has a beautiful style of writing, that will pull the reader in, and it won’t release you until you stop. She has a great ability to etch the emotions of the characters into the pages of the books, to illustrate what they felt and went through at the time, without actually saying it. This is especially More...

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Aug 09, 2010

Sian rated it:

Shazam! So much intelligence and beauty and heart in one collection of elegant highwire stories! I was just writing about why I think "Olive Kitteridge" fails as a "novel in stories" -- and yet, here is a group of stories that has so much of what was missing in that collection. The stories echo back on each other, call out to each other like migrating birds, vary and repeat and refine.

How is it that this is the first I've heard of Andrea Barrett? MUST READ MORE NOW.

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