About this title: The love of science, the science of love--and the struggle to reconcile the two--are the subjects of this remarkable collection, stories and a novella. Interweaving historical and fictional characters, these stories move between past and present as they negotiate the complex territory of ambition, failure, achievement, and shattered dreams.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780393316001ISBN:0393316009
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 254 p. Audience: General/trade. In very good condition. Like new! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780393316001ISBN:0393316009
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Pages clean, unmarked. Cover in very good condition also. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 254 p. Audience: General/trade. Set against the backdrop of the 19th century, these short fictions interweave historical and fictional characters from the world of science and nature. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780393316001ISBN:0393316009
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. cover wear at corners an top of spine, some pink stains on page edges. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 254 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Book has medium cover wear, light cover lift, spine creases, light creases on covers, sticker on front cover, light page edge wear. Each book individually hand cleaned. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780393038538ISBN:039303853X
Description: Good. 249-W Books rated "Good" may have some notes, underlining, or highlighting. These books also may contain the previous owner's name, stamp, sticker, or gift inscription, or may be library discards. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
"As with Andrea Barrett's other works, this collection of short stories gives us pieces of the big family tree on which her myriad characters are hanging. I love that her whole body of work is necessary to read in order to understand how the characters are related and their stories overlap. Ship Fever focuses on the Irish part of the family, Nora and Ned, who come to the US from Ireland... and so forth. Lovely writing, intermixing science and fiction in a pleasing way."
"Takes a look at how nature enters inside of us: our veins, our minds, our professions, our relationships. Once nature is in us, it binds us together. People are drawn together because of their common interest in studying nature. People are drawn apart in competition and jealousy. Drawn together in admiration and emulation. Drawn apart by death. Drawn together in caring for the dead."
"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 the advantage of fiction over non-fiction. You get into the heads of the scientists and of the people living through tremendous times of suffering which history tends to be composed of. Ship Fever is about the Irish immigrants emigrating to Canada during the potato famine. The US had practically cut off its borders. These immigrants were starving and sick - here it wasn't plague but typhus! A glorius mixture of love and coldness, greed and caring and nonchalance - all emotions are there to be experienced and felt. You almost feel you are one of the main characters b/c the author has made them so real. You are in their heads.
Other stories were fabulous too - although too short! OK, I am Swedish so it is perhaps not strange that I loved the story entitled The English Pupil. It is about Carl Linnaeus, when he is very old and confused. It takes place in Uppsala and Hammarby and I have walked there millions of times. The Botanical Gardens. The reader is right there. Again you are not looking from the outside at what is occurring but from the inside, from Linnaeus' head and also from the others who so well knew him.
Barrett is extremely good at presenting how women see an issue. Intelligent women living at a time when they were not suppose to be interested in anything other than helping their husbands, food and servants and the house. Some had other interests and yes they let themselves follow these interests. You cannot help but laugh and be happy for them - see the story Rare Birds. The stories occurr during the 1700s and 1800s.
I have to choose what book to read next by this author. Her ability to make science and history come alive is magnificent. This is achieved through her outstanding ability to get the reader inside the characters' heads. It is this latter ability that will help me choose which book to read."
"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 another woman who shares her interests they conduct experiments to determine if swallows hibernate under the water in the winter, even writing to an eminent naturalist of the time, Carl Linnaeus (who is the main character in Barrett's story "The English Pupil"). The ending at first troubled me with its vagueness, but after considering the plot and themes of the story I realized that it was the perfect ending. and I came instead to admire the neatness of story's interconnectedness.
In "Birds with No Feet" Alec, a young American tries to make his fortune by collecting specimens of animals in South America and Asia, running into Alfred Wallace along the way and hearing his developing thoughts on evolution.
"Ship Fever" is a devastating novella about a doctor accustomed to treating the privileged takes a post at a quarantine station for immigrants during the Irish famine where he witnesses ship after ship over crowed with Irish infected with typhus fever."
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