“The Air We Breathe” provides an insight into tuberculosis sanatoriums but also is a mix of science, World War I paranoia and romantic entanglements that takes forever to gather momentum.

Set primarily in a 100-plus-patient sanatorium in the mountains of upstate New York, before and during America’s involvement in the war, the world of “The Air We Breathe” is altered by the weekly gatherings begun by Miles, a 37-year-old tuberculosis sufferer in an upscale cottage. Driven weekly to the Tamarack S More...

Set in upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains in 1916 as the U.S. prepares to enter WWI, this story follows the lives of patients and care providers at a tuberculosis sanitarium for the indigent. Near the beginning of the novel, a wealthy business man, also staying in the mountains to recover from TB – but at one of the private cure cottages only afforded to the privileged, decides to begin a Wednesday lecture series at the sanitarium, whereby every Wednesday evening a different person (startin More...

A book club read for me, Barrett very confidently takes the reader back to the days when tuberculosis ravaged cities' populations, eventually suspending the lives of those who contracted the disease while also paralyzing those not infected by the fear of this invisible menace.

So much was going on in American society at the time -- industry was booming, women were finally being recognized in terms of equal rights and accomplishments, and science emerged as much more than an academic field, but More...

I wanted to read this book because I was so impressed with a short story in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction by Barrett (called “The Littoral Zone”). This is very good; among its villainous characters is a man who is pathetically insecure and cannot mind his own business and finally discovers that he has some skill in organizing groups of patriots (the time is World War I) to suss out saboteurs and others with a trace of treasonous opinion. Among the sympathetic characters are immigrants wh More...

I read this on a recommendation from a professor because I write similar things, so part of my enjoyment of this book is from a purely nerdy writerly point of view. Fair warning!

The point of view of the book is odd -- it's mostly "we" with a lot of points where it becomes a specific person, often one that the "we" should know nothing about. It's a little disconcerting at first, but if you just roll with it, it works, and there's a good explanation for why, but you have to wait until the last pa More...

This story, which takes place as World War I is underway at a sanitorium in the Adirondacks, was one I wanted to read after reading a blurb about it on a "Book of the Day" calendar a co-worker gave me for Christmas. The time period is one of my favorites, and I was intrigued that the action all occurred at the sanitorium. The story focuses from the beginning on one of the patients, Leo Marburg, who we meet as he is first arriving after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. The narrator remains some More...

The Air We Breathe brings back descendants of some of the characters introduced in Andrea Barrett's National Book Award

Barrett brings her skill in mixing science with human history to this novel set in a tuberculosis sanitarium in New York's Adirondack Mountains in 1916. Human progress and human folly march side-by-side, like the WWI soldiers doomed by mustard gas and machine-gun fire. At Tamarack State, tubercular patients can see detailed X-rays of their damaged lungs--but in the absence of antibiotics, must rely for a "cure" on isolation, rest, fresh air, bland food, and cheerful thoughts. Cheerful thoughts a More...

I'm not sure if the cover photograph &/or the title had anything to do with it, but I had been wanting to read this since it was first released several years ago. The story centers around a group of people diagnosed with tuberculosis during the time of World War I, who are "curing" in a medical sanitorium in the Adirondacks. Sadly, the plot doesn't get a whole lot more exciting than that. The story is told by an unnamed narrator who is one of the patients there, but we never hear anything at More...

Refreshing to step out of the modern world and into a sanitorium for indigent TB patients in upstate New York at the start of World War I. Forced into inactivity by the prevailing wisdom on TB treatments --keep 'em 1) flat on their backs to promote blood flow to the infected lungs, 2) calm, and 3) outdoors as much as possible-- this diverse group of immigrants turns to the world of their minds to pass the long hours. No surprise that their human relationships are equally diverting and ultimately More...

I am familiar with the villages of the Adirondacks where this novel is set. In Tupper Lake, there is an institution now called Sunmount Developmental Center that was the site in the late 19th & early 20th centuries of a tuberculosis sanitarium. I have visited Sunmount many times it my professional capacity (it now houses persons with developmental disabilities). Perhaps this is the state institution that Barrett uses as the Tamarack sanitarium. Nearby Saranac Lake is well-known for its histo More...

The most fascinating part of this book for me was the voice of the narrator. It was a mix of omniscient and first person - the narrator had no name and no gender and did not have interactions that affected the plot. S/he also knew things that could mot be lnown by a single character. However, s/he refers to her/himself as one of the patients, and describes things in most ways from this POV. It was hardly noticeable - something that makes me appreciate how masterfully it was done by this author - More...

This was a great airplane read; not too difficult to read and very easy to become enmeshed in the story and characters. I read it in seven hours and it was a wonderful way to pass the flight time. The setting is an upstate New York small town which has become a haven for the wealthy and not so wealthy who have contracted TB in 1917-1918. There is a complicated love story, a WWI element, a socialist/ capitalist conflict and a thread which details the struggle of three women to rise above the conv More...

"In the first place, tuberculosis is largely a disease of the poor—of those
on or below the poverty line. " –The Tuberculosis Nurse, Ellen N. LaMotte
(1915)


Years ago I first encountered Andrea Barrett's novel Servants of the Map (2002) a book I marvelled at. Intellectually stimulating, it was simultaneously history, geopolitics, technology and science, psychology, and a writing style that could be in turns symbolic, lyric and good suspenseful narrative. And written by a woman who could and did More...

I often love historical fiction and have a minor interest in diseases of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It could have been great. A tuberculosis sanitarium for immigrants....it all started out with good character development and quickly devolved into a pat ending...
grr.

One of those novels where you forget that the characters are fictional. Some characters were first intriguing, then annoying, and then pitiful - others emerged from the crowd as sympathetic and heart-wrenching. The narrative point of view was unusual - told from the perspective of the TB patients as a whole, using "we" in a way that ultimately served the story incredibly well, never feeling like a gimmick. I didn't realize that some of the characters appeared in other of Barrett's novels, and no More...

I loved Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever which remains one of my favorite collections by a living author. Though, I truly enjoyed this book, I give it four stars because I never quite got used to the plural narrator. I feel I understand why Barrett chose such an unconventional narrator, but I wasn't entirely won over by it. BUT, I do feel much more educated about the social climate and paranoia that pervaded our country before WWI.
Reading this book reminded me how little has changed about the way we More...

From Follett -- Conflict and resentments break out in a small Adirondack town in the fall of 1916 when Miles Fairchild, a wealthy resident living in a "cure cottage" while being treated for tuberculosis, decides to start a discussion group with patients--mostly poor European immigrants--confined in the state-run sanitorium.

This book is one of the finalists for Columbia's One Read. It does cover the historical period in an interesting way (through the stories of the patients and workers at the sa More...

This is a tough one to rate numerically, because I'd give the writing either 4 or 5 stars, but the enjoyment factor probably 3.5. Barrett has written a historically comprehensive and ultimately compelling chronicle of immigrants housed in Tuberculosis sanatoriums in upstate New York in 1916. Due to the number of characters and voices, and an interesting use of an unnamed "we" narrator, it takes a bit of diligence and effort to get into the book. Once you do, however, you really do get caught up More...

Based on the recommendation I received on this book, I expected a lot more from it. I do have to give kudos to the author for the huge amount of research she must have done to write the story. The plot centers on a tuberculosis sanitorium in upstate New York during the era of WWI. The details were so interesting as to the treatment of TB patients at that time. Plus, one of the characters was mesmerized by dinosaur digs and the information on that was unbelievable. I just thought the writing got More...

I have loved every Andrea Barrett book I've read, most especially The Voyage of the Narwhal. Somehow I was a little disppointed with this one. Maybe it was because the first copy I received had a 16-page section missing in the middle! Kudos to the Book Depository for getting a replacement to me within a week, but I was reading something else by then and had lost the thread; I had to skim-read to get back into it.[return][return]So long story short, as usual Barret beautifully incorporates scienc More...

this wasn't one of my favorites. I found the narrative style to be pretty distracting. It is mainly in the first-person "we", meaning the collective patients of the sanitarium outside of the main characters- however, it would switch into the internal narrative of the main characters, sometimes in the same paragraph. pick one and stick with it- at least within paragraphs!

It was also a bit heavy on the chemistry / science aspect for my tastes, and while that's interesting enough, I was a communica More...

What makes Barrett a literary fiction writer, rather than a writer of historical fiction about scientists, is how she approaches literary inquiry, as well as the results she finds. I love how in this novel she uses clastrophobia as a theme and as a narrative device (wonderful first-person plural!) and, by the end, opens it all up, in terms of 1. making the narration transparent, 2. inventing endings/new beginnings for each character and storyline, and 3. opening the way into her other fiction, w More...

This was not one of my favorites, despite the fact that it came highly recommended. I hung in there as the author describes the environment and backgrounds, waiting for the pivotal "accident" mentioned on the back cover to occur. After 200 pages and it still hadn't happened, I was beginning to wonder if the person who wrote the book's "blurb" even read the book. Needless to say it was very slow...and left me somewhat dissatisfied at the end. Saying that, it did raise some interesting questions w More...

First person plural narration fascinated me

I can't remember when I've read a book narrated by an invisible "We," in this case, the residents of a sanitorium for tuberculosis patients in the Adirondacks. The reader sees into the minds of a small cast of fascinating characters whose lives are touched by rising paranoia/xenophobia as "national security" comes to the forefront just before the beginning of World War I. A beautifully written book of love and loss, suspicion and jealousy, intellectual More...

Time moves at different rates. If you have tuberculosis before WW II, it moved very slowly: your "job" was to rest. If you pass the time by collecting gossip, it speeds up a little; if you pass it by listening to people explain things, it's tolerable. Meanwhile, you hear, from time to time, about the world going crazy: "foreigners" persecuted, gas being used to kill people, brave young en going to war, love affairs.

This is a most interesting book, told by the residents ("we") of just such a hos More...

There is a good bit to like about “The Air We Breathe.” The story is set in a tuberculosis sanitarium in the Adirondacks at the beginning of World War I. It reminded me a bit of Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg and at bit of Erich Maria Remarque’s Drei Kameraden (both of which I read in German and hence remember in a rather vague way since I am no longer close to fluent in that language).

I liked the picture of life in a TB san – the boredom, the isolation, the friendships, the pettiness. I liked th More...

During World War I, an Adirondack town (based on Saranac Lake) houses a public sanitarium and private cure cottages for tuberculosis patients. Gossip and intrigue among the sick, mostly poor European immigrants, increases with the arrival of Leo Marburg, an attractive Russian chemist, and pompous Miles Fairchild, who starts a discussion group. Barrett is sensitive to the time period, weaving the labor movement, war fever and medical advances (especially the mysterious X-ray) into her story. Simi More...

One thing I like about Andrea Barrett's books is character overlap. A minor character in one book has a whole life story to tell in another. It's an interesting device. The Air We Breathe is set at a TB sanitorium. I confess much of the appeal for me lies in the fact that I lived (as the child of staff)at a (recently)former TB sanitorium so the setting and culture was very familiar. Barrett's novels don't tend to have a big punch at the end, but the story along the way is usually very engaging. More...

Yet another great book by the chemist-cum-novelist! Instead of a collection of short stories about an historical event ("Ship Fever"), this novel contains a singular story about a tuberculosis sanitorium in the Adironacks at the outbreak of WWI. Even if the plot runs a bit into the melodramatic, the historical information is fascinating! The author uses her characters to discuss the creation/use of chemical warfare, xrays, modern medicine and early (scary) American nationalism.

After this, I'm c More...