Carolyn's review
The Air We Breathe: A Novel
by Andrea Barrett
Carolyn's review
The Air We Breathe: A Novel by Andrea Barrett
Carolyn's review
rating:
recommended for: science/historical/fiction fans
When my husband was eight years old his mother entered a tuberculosis sanatorium. On Saturdays he and his three brothers would stand below her second floor window and shyly converse with her. Eight years later she returned home, almost a stranger to her children.
I am very curious about life in the TB sanatoriums. So, I was anxious to read a novel where the setting is in a sanatorium in 1916. The novel provided an interesting description of life there. It was a life of stringent health rules and often total bedrest.
Andrea Barrent's novels include a science theme and sometimes it was more than I could bear. But, the novel has some wonderful characters and a good plot.
It is rather chilling to read a novel written in the first person plural. The narrator is never identified for example, "...we lay on our porches in orderly rows." The patients had lost their personal identities.
I am very curious about life in the TB sanatoriums. So, I was anxious to read a novel where the setting is in a sanatorium in 1916. The novel provided an interesting description of life there. It was a life of stringent health rules and often total bedrest.
Andrea Barrent's novels include a science theme and sometimes it was more than I could bear. But, the novel has some wonderful characters and a good plot.
It is rather chilling to read a novel written in the first person plural. The narrator is never identified for example, "...we lay on our porches in orderly rows." The patients had lost their personal identities.
