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Archangel
Winner of the National Book Award for her collection of stories Ship Fever, Andrea Barrett has become one of our most admired and beloved writers. In this magnificent new book, she unfolds five pivotal moments in the lives of her characters and in the history of knowledge.
During the summer of 1908, twelve-year-old Constantine Boyd is witness to an explosion of home-spun investigation—from experiments with cave-dwelling fish without eyes to scientifically bred crops to motorized bicycles and the flight of an early aeroplane. In 1920, a popular science writer and young widow tries, immediately after the bloodbath of the First World War, to explain the new theory of relativity to an audience (herself included) desperate to believe in an “ether of space” housing spirits of the dead. Half a century earlier, in 1873, a famous biologist struggles to maintain his sense of the hierarchies of nature as Darwin’s new theory of evolution threatens to make him ridiculous in the eyes of a precocious student. The twentieth-century realms of science and war collide in the last two stories, as developments in genetics and X-ray technology that had once held so much promise fail to protect humans—among them, a young American soldier, Constantine Boyd, sent to Archangel, Russia, in 1919—from the failures of governments and from the brutality of war.
In these brilliant fictions rich with fact, Barrett explores the thrill and sense of loss that come with scientific progress and the personal passions and impersonal politics that shape all human knowledge.
During the summer of 1908, twelve-year-old Constantine Boyd is witness to an explosion of home-spun investigation—from experiments with cave-dwelling fish without eyes to scientifically bred crops to motorized bicycles and the flight of an early aeroplane. In 1920, a popular science writer and young widow tries, immediately after the bloodbath of the First World War, to explain the new theory of relativity to an audience (herself included) desperate to believe in an “ether of space” housing spirits of the dead. Half a century earlier, in 1873, a famous biologist struggles to maintain his sense of the hierarchies of nature as Darwin’s new theory of evolution threatens to make him ridiculous in the eyes of a precocious student. The twentieth-century realms of science and war collide in the last two stories, as developments in genetics and X-ray technology that had once held so much promise fail to protect humans—among them, a young American soldier, Constantine Boyd, sent to Archangel, Russia, in 1919—from the failures of governments and from the brutality of war.
In these brilliant fictions rich with fact, Barrett explores the thrill and sense of loss that come with scientific progress and the personal passions and impersonal politics that shape all human knowledge.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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About the author
Andrea Barrett
42 books333 followersAndrea Barrett is the author of The Air We Breathe, Servants of the Map (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), The Voyage of the Narwhal, Ship Fever (winner of the National Book Award), and other books. She teaches at Williams College and lives in northwestern Massachusetts.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 162 reviews
March 26, 2023
I apologize to this book's last two stories, and to this review, for being distracted, and for using them as a distraction. Not an ideal situation, but there was nothing I could do about it except not read, and I just had to read after awhile. For a fuller review, please see Rebecca Foster's review, which is why I read this book.
The five stories take us back and forth through a span of almost 50 years, with several recurring characters or references to them and to certain events. The first story is seen through the eyes of a 12-year old boy (who reappears in the final story as a young man); it's not nearly as complex as the others, but it sets the stage and I enjoyed its wide-eyed wonder. The subsequent stories are mature and full. I struggled with certain elements (too much fullness?) in the last two stories, but I hesitate to criticize them due to the aforementioned distraction.
The collection is historical fiction with a scientific bent: a rendering of fictional elements into the historical, the interaction of fictional characters with sometimes thinly veiled fictional portraits of historically important scientists. The placement of the stories, with their complex themes illuminating and reflecting within themselves and with one another, are perfect: This collection is the epitome of what a collection can be as far as cohesiveness.
I don't consider myself a 'science-person,' but the prose reads so smoothly that the science felt 'easy.' In that respect, it reminded me of Doerr's The Shell Collector, in particular its title story.
The five stories take us back and forth through a span of almost 50 years, with several recurring characters or references to them and to certain events. The first story is seen through the eyes of a 12-year old boy (who reappears in the final story as a young man); it's not nearly as complex as the others, but it sets the stage and I enjoyed its wide-eyed wonder. The subsequent stories are mature and full. I struggled with certain elements (too much fullness?) in the last two stories, but I hesitate to criticize them due to the aforementioned distraction.
The collection is historical fiction with a scientific bent: a rendering of fictional elements into the historical, the interaction of fictional characters with sometimes thinly veiled fictional portraits of historically important scientists. The placement of the stories, with their complex themes illuminating and reflecting within themselves and with one another, are perfect: This collection is the epitome of what a collection can be as far as cohesiveness.
I don't consider myself a 'science-person,' but the prose reads so smoothly that the science felt 'easy.' In that respect, it reminded me of Doerr's The Shell Collector, in particular its title story.
February 14, 2014
This elegantly written and deftly plotted short story collection reminded me of A.S. Byatt’s work – specifically Angels and Insects, but also Byatt’s frequent treatment of historical science. Along with women in science, some of Barrett’s linking themes are: evolution, both as a scientific proposal and in the more metaphorical sense of heredity and change over time (“Who am I? Who do I resemble, and who not? What makes me me, what makes you you; what do we inherit, and what not?” Sam muses in “The Particles”), the natural versus the spiritual, and how the dead continue to influence us after they are gone.
The opening story is a bit of a slow one and didn’t grab me at first, but I loved the three central stories. I particularly adored the middle one, “The Island,” which shares a coastal Massachusetts setting with Elizabeth Graver’s wonderful novel, The End of the Point . On a summer marine biology course, two ardent female naturalists are caught up in the debate over Darwin’s theory of evolution versus creationism – but bear in mind this is 1873. Barrett comes out with some stellar lines; my favorite from this story was: “Dormant fens dotted the shale cliffs, which were layered with fossils; the fields rippled with glacial moraines and she could not, she thought, have found a better place to demonstrate the workings of time.”
Other stories take up aeronautics, astronomy, genetics, X-ray technology, and relativity, cleverly weaving historical figures and ideas into interlocking fictional narratives. (I must admit, it took me an embarrassingly long time to work out the connections between the various stories; I read the book so slowly and sporadically that I didn’t even note the recurrence of character names until the very last story. Then, when I went back, I discovered all the other little moments of overlap, and was impressed anew at Barrett’s achievement.)
“As with fingers of the blind, / We are groping here to find / What the hieroglyphics mean / Of the Unseen in the seen, / What the Thought which underlies / Nature’s masking and disguise, / What it is that hides beneath / Blight and bloom and birth and death.” (John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Prayer of Agassiz,” 1874)
That fragment of poetry, cited in “The Island,” is a beautiful summary of the scientist’s aim, but also of the mission we all have: to seek out what lies beneath the facts of mere physical existence – to find what makes that existence worth living. I look forward to reading much more from Andrea Barrett.
The opening story is a bit of a slow one and didn’t grab me at first, but I loved the three central stories. I particularly adored the middle one, “The Island,” which shares a coastal Massachusetts setting with Elizabeth Graver’s wonderful novel, The End of the Point . On a summer marine biology course, two ardent female naturalists are caught up in the debate over Darwin’s theory of evolution versus creationism – but bear in mind this is 1873. Barrett comes out with some stellar lines; my favorite from this story was: “Dormant fens dotted the shale cliffs, which were layered with fossils; the fields rippled with glacial moraines and she could not, she thought, have found a better place to demonstrate the workings of time.”
Other stories take up aeronautics, astronomy, genetics, X-ray technology, and relativity, cleverly weaving historical figures and ideas into interlocking fictional narratives. (I must admit, it took me an embarrassingly long time to work out the connections between the various stories; I read the book so slowly and sporadically that I didn’t even note the recurrence of character names until the very last story. Then, when I went back, I discovered all the other little moments of overlap, and was impressed anew at Barrett’s achievement.)
“As with fingers of the blind, / We are groping here to find / What the hieroglyphics mean / Of the Unseen in the seen, / What the Thought which underlies / Nature’s masking and disguise, / What it is that hides beneath / Blight and bloom and birth and death.” (John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Prayer of Agassiz,” 1874)
That fragment of poetry, cited in “The Island,” is a beautiful summary of the scientist’s aim, but also of the mission we all have: to seek out what lies beneath the facts of mere physical existence – to find what makes that existence worth living. I look forward to reading much more from Andrea Barrett.
December 29, 2014
Andrea Barrett writes about professional scientists and those enchanted, enraptured with the prospect of science - the discovery of something new, a grasp of understanding of how the world operates, what laws drive its creatures - in a compelling and engaging way. Her stories often operate on two levels - the protagonists's personal experiences are placed in a larger historical/scientific context. A good example of this would be the opening story, titled The Investigators and set in 1908, in which the young protagonist's summer vacation is a background to a show of various scientific improvements, including the flight of a an early aeroplane.
The stories in Archangel are long - most oscillate around 50 pages - and interwoven in subtle ways - the protagonist of one will often return in a different role in another. Previously this year I read another collection by Barrett, Servants of the Map, which I really enjoyed and would recommend as a possible introduction to her work. In comparison, Archangel rates second - while the quality of the writing and the interest in times and people is there, the compelling stories and characters are not. Most of these stories should appeal to me because of my own interests - the title story is set in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk, after the October Revolution and amid the Allied intervention in the Civil War. The same setting is used in Robert Harris's fabulous historical thriller, Archangel, and is a fascinating historical background, but remains woefully underused - most that we get of it is the standard fare of rising suppression of scientists and other independently minded people who do not support the emerging regime. I found the characters that populate these stories to be largely forgettable; I expected much more from the author of the moving story of Max Vigne, a young English surveyor who writes to his wife from the mountains of India in Servants of the Map.
Archangel had great potential - it contains moments of beauty and poignancy and sketches of interesting protagonists, situations and time, but has missed the chance to what it could have been - a worthy spiritual successor to Servants of the Map. This is where a half-a-star rating would be useful - I'm sorry to have to give just three starts to Andrea Barrett, and I am definitely looking forward to reading more of her collections and novels.
The stories in Archangel are long - most oscillate around 50 pages - and interwoven in subtle ways - the protagonist of one will often return in a different role in another. Previously this year I read another collection by Barrett, Servants of the Map, which I really enjoyed and would recommend as a possible introduction to her work. In comparison, Archangel rates second - while the quality of the writing and the interest in times and people is there, the compelling stories and characters are not. Most of these stories should appeal to me because of my own interests - the title story is set in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk, after the October Revolution and amid the Allied intervention in the Civil War. The same setting is used in Robert Harris's fabulous historical thriller, Archangel, and is a fascinating historical background, but remains woefully underused - most that we get of it is the standard fare of rising suppression of scientists and other independently minded people who do not support the emerging regime. I found the characters that populate these stories to be largely forgettable; I expected much more from the author of the moving story of Max Vigne, a young English surveyor who writes to his wife from the mountains of India in Servants of the Map.
Archangel had great potential - it contains moments of beauty and poignancy and sketches of interesting protagonists, situations and time, but has missed the chance to what it could have been - a worthy spiritual successor to Servants of the Map. This is where a half-a-star rating would be useful - I'm sorry to have to give just three starts to Andrea Barrett, and I am definitely looking forward to reading more of her collections and novels.
October 26, 2023
I can't think of any author that can write about science and the people involved with science in such a compelling way as Andrea Barrett, and Archangel is a stunning example of her abilities. In this group of five interconnected stories, she writes about early aviation, Darwin's theory of evolution, Einstein's theory of relativity, genetics research, and early x-ray technology. This is historical fiction, and the scientific pioneers are either named or easily recognizable, but Barrett writes so well that these real scientists never overtake the fictional characters she has created.
The interconnectedness of the stories is truly original. The young boy, Constantine Boyd, in the first story, "The Investigators", returns as a grown man and soldier in World War I in the last story, "Archangel". In "The Investigators", Constantine comes to know a neighbor named Miss Atkins who is interested in blind cave fish. Henrietta Atkins returns as a student and teacher in "The Island" where she comes to understand Darwin's theory of evolution from The Professor (Louis Agassiz, although he is not named in the story), but her understanding is quite different from what he is trying to teach. "The Ether of Science" deals with widowed science writer Phoebe Cornelius trying to reconcile what she knows and feels with the ideas of Sir Oliver Lodge. Phoebe's son, Sam, accompanies her to a lecture given by Lodge, one where she is just baffled and confused, but Sam understands what is going on very well, and writes a paper that amazes his mother. This scene has some of the best writing I have ever read about science, humans, emotion, and the reconciliation of science and spirituality. Sam later appears in "The Particles" as a geneticist aboard the Athenia, a British ship sunk by the Nazis in World War II.
I've most likely made this seem more jumbled and confused than Barrett's exceptional writing in Archangel really is, but these stories are all clear, direct, and simply beautiful. I listened to this as an audiobook, and while this was a fine way to experience the book, I will definitely be rereading this in print, so as to not miss any details and for the real pleasure of reading stories so beautifully written.
The interconnectedness of the stories is truly original. The young boy, Constantine Boyd, in the first story, "The Investigators", returns as a grown man and soldier in World War I in the last story, "Archangel". In "The Investigators", Constantine comes to know a neighbor named Miss Atkins who is interested in blind cave fish. Henrietta Atkins returns as a student and teacher in "The Island" where she comes to understand Darwin's theory of evolution from The Professor (Louis Agassiz, although he is not named in the story), but her understanding is quite different from what he is trying to teach. "The Ether of Science" deals with widowed science writer Phoebe Cornelius trying to reconcile what she knows and feels with the ideas of Sir Oliver Lodge. Phoebe's son, Sam, accompanies her to a lecture given by Lodge, one where she is just baffled and confused, but Sam understands what is going on very well, and writes a paper that amazes his mother. This scene has some of the best writing I have ever read about science, humans, emotion, and the reconciliation of science and spirituality. Sam later appears in "The Particles" as a geneticist aboard the Athenia, a British ship sunk by the Nazis in World War II.
I've most likely made this seem more jumbled and confused than Barrett's exceptional writing in Archangel really is, but these stories are all clear, direct, and simply beautiful. I listened to this as an audiobook, and while this was a fine way to experience the book, I will definitely be rereading this in print, so as to not miss any details and for the real pleasure of reading stories so beautifully written.
September 4, 2013
Oh, man! So many writers, I think, turn to fantasy or exaggeration, cynicism or humor or stylistic showiness to try to express how deeply wonderful and unfamiliar this seeming familiar, boring world actually is--once again, Andrea Barrett just manages to go deeper into the world itself, and to tangle it up with all these people in a ways that show all these new connections between the intellectual and the emotional. And of course who isn't into those blind cave-dwelling fish? Masterful.
April 1, 2018
Five linked stories dealing with scientific discovery and the acceptance of/resistance to new ideas, among other themes. Some stories were chillier than others, but all are beautifully written, stimulating and well worth reading.
September 1, 2013
I adore Andrea Barrett. I think I've read all her other books, and have enjoyed them immensely. I like good historical fiction, and her history of science angle has always made her books really special. For some reason, though, this one, though I was so excited to find it, didn't grab me as much. I'm not sure if it's the book, or if I was in the wrong frame of mind.
I feel like I've read at least two other collections like this from her, of interconnected stories that take place in different eras and have to do with science and travel. And I feel like the other ones were enthralling... whereas this one was just sort of ok. It's weird, because I do find the topics covered here very interesting... natural history and the Victorian Darwinian vs Creationism debates, travel in the far north, sinking ships... but maybe it was the characters, this time out, that didn't compel me as much. Perhaps the first story, being told from the point of view of a young teenage boy, just put me off a bit — for some reason young boy narrators always bug me... I don't know why. Too many unrelatable French coming-of-age films watched in my youth.
It's not bad, and it definitely has many vivid images and interesting ideas. The description gets wonderfully cinematic in places, and I loved picturing the tidepools and sea urchins, the knees of the woman behind the rower in a rescue lifeboat at once paining and comforting him as they jabbed into his back, and the sledges outside the Northern Russian field hospital.
The brief part of the last story, where there is description of xrays brought me back to Barrett's last, wonderful, enveloping novel The Air We Breathe and made me wished these stories were more sustained and the characters more developed, like in that novel. Or maybe I just like xrays.
But somehow, there was just too much exposition about the relationships between scientists... in a way that didn't make a ton of sense to me. Maybe it would if that were more my world... I'm not sure. Maybe it's because this kind of collegial relationship is not usually the stuff of literature. I kept expecting there to be some kind of love affair, or gay coming out or... I don't know, drama but it was really just who returned who's letter agreeing or disagreeing with the latest physics theorem, or who cast a grouchy glance at whom across the dinner table after a conference. And, really, these are legitimate things to capture in fiction... and it makes for lovely, quiet, understated stories... but I was either expecting or just in the mood for, something more grand.
Like I say, it's probably me not feeling subtle, rather than the author's shortcomings that made me like this book less than her others. The writing is strong, and I love her unique subject matter. So, not a bad read at all, but just make sure you're in the mood for subtly.
I feel like I've read at least two other collections like this from her, of interconnected stories that take place in different eras and have to do with science and travel. And I feel like the other ones were enthralling... whereas this one was just sort of ok. It's weird, because I do find the topics covered here very interesting... natural history and the Victorian Darwinian vs Creationism debates, travel in the far north, sinking ships... but maybe it was the characters, this time out, that didn't compel me as much. Perhaps the first story, being told from the point of view of a young teenage boy, just put me off a bit — for some reason young boy narrators always bug me... I don't know why. Too many unrelatable French coming-of-age films watched in my youth.
It's not bad, and it definitely has many vivid images and interesting ideas. The description gets wonderfully cinematic in places, and I loved picturing the tidepools and sea urchins, the knees of the woman behind the rower in a rescue lifeboat at once paining and comforting him as they jabbed into his back, and the sledges outside the Northern Russian field hospital.
The brief part of the last story, where there is description of xrays brought me back to Barrett's last, wonderful, enveloping novel The Air We Breathe and made me wished these stories were more sustained and the characters more developed, like in that novel. Or maybe I just like xrays.
But somehow, there was just too much exposition about the relationships between scientists... in a way that didn't make a ton of sense to me. Maybe it would if that were more my world... I'm not sure. Maybe it's because this kind of collegial relationship is not usually the stuff of literature. I kept expecting there to be some kind of love affair, or gay coming out or... I don't know, drama but it was really just who returned who's letter agreeing or disagreeing with the latest physics theorem, or who cast a grouchy glance at whom across the dinner table after a conference. And, really, these are legitimate things to capture in fiction... and it makes for lovely, quiet, understated stories... but I was either expecting or just in the mood for, something more grand.
Like I say, it's probably me not feeling subtle, rather than the author's shortcomings that made me like this book less than her others. The writing is strong, and I love her unique subject matter. So, not a bad read at all, but just make sure you're in the mood for subtly.
February 17, 2014
Barrett consistently writes books that are so smart, suffused with science and the joy and pain of scientific discovery, yet not forgoing relationship (and its commensurate joys and pains). Her characters are often earnest, if not completely self-aware or emotionally honest, seekers after truths, even when those truths are barely glimpsed or marginally understood. They are seeking something real and true, and often looking for that in science and discovery. Here, she again explores these themes with characters in the early 20th century, when Darwin's ideas were still new, when World War I gets in the way of scientific exploration and collaboration, and when women were struggling to find places on the scientific world outside of their traditional roles as helpmeets and test tube washers. Some wonderful stuff.
October 9, 2013
This collection of short stories is beautifully written. There are 5 stories in the book; all of them take place in the late 19th-early 20th century and revolve around scientific ideas of the time. I enjoyed four of the five stories, particularly "The Island" and the title story "Archangel." Barrett's landscape writing is incredible. All of her characters either struggle with the scientific ideas of the time or are completely in awe of new discoveries. Each story has a certain sense of melancholy or "fall from grace." I loved that several of these were about women and science--a topic that does not appear enough in literature.
January 6, 2014
Andrea Barrett is a wonder. She is the best writer I've ever found to combine historical fiction and science. I absolutely loved her collection of short stories, Ship Fever, and also really liked her novel The Air We Breathe. Archangel is different from both. It's kind of like a collection of short stories, with a simple link, either one character at a different decade in that person's life, or maybe just a similar theme. And an odd theme. I find myself completely absorbed by her characters. Andrea Barrett's writing is brilliant, and I like her focus on women in science, on natural history, and on Darwin's legacy.
January 13, 2020
This is an astonishing collection of delicately connected narrative. I feel I should reread it from the beginning straight away. Barrett tells stories about scientists and science, about the desperate struggle to cling to what we think we know in the face of evidence that counters all our assumptions. The collection shifts from the later nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, while reviewing assumptions about genetics and inheritance.
I always learn more than I expect from Barrett, about history and whatever topic she has chosen for her focus, but I also learn about people. I cry sometimes, but I am always grateful for the humanity of her telling.
I always learn more than I expect from Barrett, about history and whatever topic she has chosen for her focus, but I also learn about people. I cry sometimes, but I am always grateful for the humanity of her telling.
March 15, 2014
I liked this, for the most part, with the caveat that I'm a sucker for Enlightenment-era science stories. There were only five to the whole book, and some worked better than others—I felt her research peeking through fairly regularly, and some of the narrative seemed like more of an armature to hang the science on than anything propelling the story, except in a very abstract way. Still, her writing is lovely, and it all managed to hang together pretty well.
July 5, 2016
Interconnected short stories or a novel? Depends upon how you look at it.
Which is fitting, giving that vision is a central organizing theme, even if it remains implicit throughout these five stories.
Andrea Barrett is the historian of science's favorite author, penning a number of stories and one novel about scientists in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. She returns to that stomping ground here, though this collection is the slimmest, I believe--which might have to do with the acclaim she has received and the pressure to put out a book--and also the most integrated. It's reminiscent, in its way, of Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad," which similarly blurred the boundaries between short-story collection and novel, though that structural parallel is really the only one.
The first story, "The Investigators" (1908) details the coming of a young Midwestern boy, Stan, to an uncle's property in New York, where he meets a number of eccentric characters who are imbued with an amateurish but infectious love for scientific investigation and technological tinkering. "The Ether of Space" (1920) flashes us forward in time, though not so distant in space; it is a story of a science writer trying to get her mind around the fact that some physicists had not embraced Einstein's theories and held out for the existence of a untouchable ether, in order to make the existence of life after death thinkable. She is also trying to deal with a son who seems alien to her--though he is alive.
"The Island" (1873) is, literally and figuratively, the book's center, dropping us back to the origins of all this American science, with Louis Agassiz--known only as the Professor--setting up a summer island retreat for budding scientists. Here he tries to inspire a new generation even as he is being passed by--he holds on to Creationism while his young charges are energized by evolution. One of them will become a science teacher who we meet again (before) in the first story.
Sam, the boy from the second story, grows up to be a geneticist, whom the reader meets again in the fourth story, "The Particles" (1939). He is aboard a ship that is one of the first casualties of World War II, along with other scientists returning from a conference, As he is rescued, along with his teacher, we learn that his scientific pedigree goes back to Agassiz--and like that of his distant intellectual ancestor, he has a penchant for the wrong theory. He is drawn to the idea of inherited characteristics, but is shown up by a fellow student, who also wins away from him the affection of his beloved, and, so Sam thinks, the appreciation of his teacher. But just as Stan, in the first story, mis-understands his parents, so does Sam here, not realizing, until Story's end, that he has always been the favorite.
The various strands climax in the final story, "Archangel" (1919), about Stan's military adventures at the end of World War I in a distant Russian frontier, where X-ray machines are a valuable commodity, to valuable to be used on his injuries. Already we knew of this battle from the second story, when the science writer's family was making goods to send to the poor soldiers here.
At its heart, then, the stories here about how we see the universe, and what we cannot see. Whether inheritance is naught but the movement of material beads on a strong. Whether the universe is empty or full--of stuff, of spirits. Whether X-rays can see what really ails us--and whether they can alter those beads we call genes. And so the recurring motif through these stories is the blind cave fish, also known as the X-ray fish, which puzzled evolutionist and creationist alike: how did it evolve? Was it perfectly created as it was? What does it see, this X-ray, of the universe and its functioning. The first story ends with Sam submerging himself in a pond to see if he can find some of these fish, let loose in New York to discover if they would re-grow eyes: we are all looking, but through the water darkly, as it were.
The ending of that first story is perhaps the best of them all, weird and wonderful, and evocative while not being completely reducible to the mechanics and symbolism of the story or those that follow. It works on its own and as part of a loosely connected novel--which is what raises the question about how we are to understand this book. I wish others were as ambiguous.
Instead, these stories seem relatively rote. By now, Barrett has developed her narrative voice to a fine point. But nothing here seems to challenge it. She provides plenty of historically-rooted examples in a mannered yet precise way. The stories could have come from any of her collections--the voice in them all is the same. (This obviously makes the book a great deal different than Egan's.)
What sets her books apart, though, is the interweaving of science and fiction: her attempts to make the scientific enterprise fully human. That doesn't quite work here, though. The science is either completely peripheral, explained in long bits of exposition or stilted dialogue--or it is too obviously a symbolic mirror for the rest of the story.
Ironically, in a collection this connected, the science and the narrative never feels integrated.
Which is fitting, giving that vision is a central organizing theme, even if it remains implicit throughout these five stories.
Andrea Barrett is the historian of science's favorite author, penning a number of stories and one novel about scientists in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. She returns to that stomping ground here, though this collection is the slimmest, I believe--which might have to do with the acclaim she has received and the pressure to put out a book--and also the most integrated. It's reminiscent, in its way, of Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad," which similarly blurred the boundaries between short-story collection and novel, though that structural parallel is really the only one.
The first story, "The Investigators" (1908) details the coming of a young Midwestern boy, Stan, to an uncle's property in New York, where he meets a number of eccentric characters who are imbued with an amateurish but infectious love for scientific investigation and technological tinkering. "The Ether of Space" (1920) flashes us forward in time, though not so distant in space; it is a story of a science writer trying to get her mind around the fact that some physicists had not embraced Einstein's theories and held out for the existence of a untouchable ether, in order to make the existence of life after death thinkable. She is also trying to deal with a son who seems alien to her--though he is alive.
"The Island" (1873) is, literally and figuratively, the book's center, dropping us back to the origins of all this American science, with Louis Agassiz--known only as the Professor--setting up a summer island retreat for budding scientists. Here he tries to inspire a new generation even as he is being passed by--he holds on to Creationism while his young charges are energized by evolution. One of them will become a science teacher who we meet again (before) in the first story.
Sam, the boy from the second story, grows up to be a geneticist, whom the reader meets again in the fourth story, "The Particles" (1939). He is aboard a ship that is one of the first casualties of World War II, along with other scientists returning from a conference, As he is rescued, along with his teacher, we learn that his scientific pedigree goes back to Agassiz--and like that of his distant intellectual ancestor, he has a penchant for the wrong theory. He is drawn to the idea of inherited characteristics, but is shown up by a fellow student, who also wins away from him the affection of his beloved, and, so Sam thinks, the appreciation of his teacher. But just as Stan, in the first story, mis-understands his parents, so does Sam here, not realizing, until Story's end, that he has always been the favorite.
The various strands climax in the final story, "Archangel" (1919), about Stan's military adventures at the end of World War I in a distant Russian frontier, where X-ray machines are a valuable commodity, to valuable to be used on his injuries. Already we knew of this battle from the second story, when the science writer's family was making goods to send to the poor soldiers here.
At its heart, then, the stories here about how we see the universe, and what we cannot see. Whether inheritance is naught but the movement of material beads on a strong. Whether the universe is empty or full--of stuff, of spirits. Whether X-rays can see what really ails us--and whether they can alter those beads we call genes. And so the recurring motif through these stories is the blind cave fish, also known as the X-ray fish, which puzzled evolutionist and creationist alike: how did it evolve? Was it perfectly created as it was? What does it see, this X-ray, of the universe and its functioning. The first story ends with Sam submerging himself in a pond to see if he can find some of these fish, let loose in New York to discover if they would re-grow eyes: we are all looking, but through the water darkly, as it were.
The ending of that first story is perhaps the best of them all, weird and wonderful, and evocative while not being completely reducible to the mechanics and symbolism of the story or those that follow. It works on its own and as part of a loosely connected novel--which is what raises the question about how we are to understand this book. I wish others were as ambiguous.
Instead, these stories seem relatively rote. By now, Barrett has developed her narrative voice to a fine point. But nothing here seems to challenge it. She provides plenty of historically-rooted examples in a mannered yet precise way. The stories could have come from any of her collections--the voice in them all is the same. (This obviously makes the book a great deal different than Egan's.)
What sets her books apart, though, is the interweaving of science and fiction: her attempts to make the scientific enterprise fully human. That doesn't quite work here, though. The science is either completely peripheral, explained in long bits of exposition or stilted dialogue--or it is too obviously a symbolic mirror for the rest of the story.
Ironically, in a collection this connected, the science and the narrative never feels integrated.
May 19, 2021
I gotta say, I love Andrea Barrett. Nobody writes quite like her with her quiet descriptive/moving stories of history/science/medicine/life. This is a collection of very long stories set in the late 1800s and just post WWI 1900s. Women and men occupy a thinking life, a considered life even when they turn out to be wrongheaded or limited in their views. Such a good read.
August 25, 2013
Fans of Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures or A.S. Byatt’s “Morpho Eugenia” are likely to appreciate Andrea Barrett’s Archangel, a collection of short stories that address the psychological transformations of men and women invested in the developing sciences from 1908 to 1939.
Barrett’s characters wage private battles as they grope their way through conflicting ideas and alliances. Oliver Lodge’s etheric theory is challenged by Einstein’s relativity; Louis Agassiz’s polygenism steadily loses ground to Charles Darwin’s evolution.
Whether Barrett is describing the injection of red dye into the eyes of fruit flies or the fluoroscopic examination of a wounded soldier, she manages to educate the reader about scientific history even as plots are driven by emotional rivalries.
The stories interrelate. A boy who responds to his father’s death with tantrums in “The Ether of Space” grows up to become a promising geneticist in “The Particles,” but hankers obsessively for the attentions of the professor who has become a father figure.
I loved the way Barrett presented the female characters in this collection. In "The Ether of Space," the primary protagonist is the mother of the aforementioned boy. A writer of popular science books, Phoebe Wells Cornelius attends a lecture by an eminent scientist, hoping to understand his views on etheric energy more fully, but is shaken by his verbal descent into spiritualist blather. How is it that men who are established as intellectual experts suffer such lapses in judgment?
Although war-related grief certainly charged much of the fantasy fulfillment that is evident in the writings of period believers in spiritualism, telepathy, and the like (see Arthur Conan Doyle on the Cottingley Fairies, for example), Barrett demonstrates how truly progressive minds can continue to impress even when important features of their beliefs have been largely rejected by history.
“The Island,” which recounts Agassiz’s establishment of the John Anderson school of natural science on Penikese island in Massachusetts, is probably my favorite story in the volume. By grounding most of the narrative in the perspective of a female student, Henrietta Atkins, Barrett manages to humanize Agassiz. (I had previously encountered the natural scientist in fictional guise in Reif Larsen's The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.)
Initially, Henrietta’s idol worship keeps her stammering in the presence of the eminent professor, but her loyalties shift when she is finally introduced to Darwin’s Origin of Species, which she had never actually read, having been dissuaded from doing so by former teachers. Henrietta might have continued in her docile reverence of Agassiz’s creationist science if it had not been for her friendship with another female student, who recognizes the worth of Agassiz’s contribution, even as she openly challenges his views on transmutation.
Barrett positions Henrietta between this character, Daphne, and the professor’s wife, Elizabeth Cabot Carey Agassiz. While the former seems to be cast as a New Woman, proving capable of thinking for herself without coming across as stridently stereotypical, the latter is devoted to her husband as well as to his beliefs, despite her own success as a published author. The wife’s career has clearly been sublimated to the husband’s—and, yet, she’s an admirable figure and not just a mind-washed disciple.
Henrietta’s quandary is that she is prone to revere or to reject. Once her faith in the professor is shaken, she can’t quite see her way to adapting as Daphne has done, to take what she can use and dismiss what she can’t. Henrietta is prone to casting out the water baby with the bay water. Barrett's representation of Henrietta's psychological predicament satisfyingly captures the ambivalence experienced by intelligent persons in the later years of the nineteenth century.
I am grateful to First Reads for providing my advance reader’s copy of Barrett’s most recent collection.
Barrett’s characters wage private battles as they grope their way through conflicting ideas and alliances. Oliver Lodge’s etheric theory is challenged by Einstein’s relativity; Louis Agassiz’s polygenism steadily loses ground to Charles Darwin’s evolution.
Whether Barrett is describing the injection of red dye into the eyes of fruit flies or the fluoroscopic examination of a wounded soldier, she manages to educate the reader about scientific history even as plots are driven by emotional rivalries.
The stories interrelate. A boy who responds to his father’s death with tantrums in “The Ether of Space” grows up to become a promising geneticist in “The Particles,” but hankers obsessively for the attentions of the professor who has become a father figure.
I loved the way Barrett presented the female characters in this collection. In "The Ether of Space," the primary protagonist is the mother of the aforementioned boy. A writer of popular science books, Phoebe Wells Cornelius attends a lecture by an eminent scientist, hoping to understand his views on etheric energy more fully, but is shaken by his verbal descent into spiritualist blather. How is it that men who are established as intellectual experts suffer such lapses in judgment?
Although war-related grief certainly charged much of the fantasy fulfillment that is evident in the writings of period believers in spiritualism, telepathy, and the like (see Arthur Conan Doyle on the Cottingley Fairies, for example), Barrett demonstrates how truly progressive minds can continue to impress even when important features of their beliefs have been largely rejected by history.
“The Island,” which recounts Agassiz’s establishment of the John Anderson school of natural science on Penikese island in Massachusetts, is probably my favorite story in the volume. By grounding most of the narrative in the perspective of a female student, Henrietta Atkins, Barrett manages to humanize Agassiz. (I had previously encountered the natural scientist in fictional guise in Reif Larsen's The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.)
Initially, Henrietta’s idol worship keeps her stammering in the presence of the eminent professor, but her loyalties shift when she is finally introduced to Darwin’s Origin of Species, which she had never actually read, having been dissuaded from doing so by former teachers. Henrietta might have continued in her docile reverence of Agassiz’s creationist science if it had not been for her friendship with another female student, who recognizes the worth of Agassiz’s contribution, even as she openly challenges his views on transmutation.
Barrett positions Henrietta between this character, Daphne, and the professor’s wife, Elizabeth Cabot Carey Agassiz. While the former seems to be cast as a New Woman, proving capable of thinking for herself without coming across as stridently stereotypical, the latter is devoted to her husband as well as to his beliefs, despite her own success as a published author. The wife’s career has clearly been sublimated to the husband’s—and, yet, she’s an admirable figure and not just a mind-washed disciple.
Henrietta’s quandary is that she is prone to revere or to reject. Once her faith in the professor is shaken, she can’t quite see her way to adapting as Daphne has done, to take what she can use and dismiss what she can’t. Henrietta is prone to casting out the water baby with the bay water. Barrett's representation of Henrietta's psychological predicament satisfyingly captures the ambivalence experienced by intelligent persons in the later years of the nineteenth century.
I am grateful to First Reads for providing my advance reader’s copy of Barrett’s most recent collection.
October 11, 2014
This small collection of five interconnected stories was a fabulous discovery. National Book Award winning author Andrea Barrett is now a professor of English at Williams College, but graduated from college with a degree in biology. With these stories she uses these interests and experience to brilliantly and lovingly explore the process of scientific investigation and discovery and its effects on society’s view of the universe and the ties between individuals.
The five stories non-chronologically span from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, linked both by science and character relations, covering monumental discoveries of evolution, genetics, Einstein’s relativity, and particle physics over the sociopolitical historical backdrops of each ear. They therefore will appeal to readers that appreciate fiction that is historical, scientific, literary, or (like me) all three.
As a scientist I was immediately struck by how realistically Barrett portrays the practice of science. I often think that the genre term science fiction is better dubbed speculative fiction, or even technological fiction. Rarely is SF concerned with the actual process of science and its social implications, rather it becomes about future applications of science and their effects on life. I’ve always looked for science fiction that was realistically just that: fictionalized accounts of doing current or past science. In Archangel, the characters and stories themselves are infused with a sense of excitement, wonder, and impatience, yet also a bit of skepticism, doubt/uncertainty, and inadequacy. Barrett touches upon the differences between science and pseudoscience and the sometimes hazy divide that can appear between the two.
Ultimately, science is a social activity, it is not a cool Vulcanesque rationality divorced from humanity, culture, and relationships. Barrett’s recognition and exploration of this is what wraps the historic and scientific foundation of her writing with a delicate literary silk. The characters of Archangel exist in periods of world-shifting ideas that call into question the beliefs and assumptions of individuals and society. They must struggle with their own preconceptions and the expectations of others as they are confronted with new evidence and models of the universe. This is difficult when one has built their reputation on alternate ideas, when one’s respected and accomplished mentor is falling on the wrong side of scientific understanding/history, or when family members or the national culture have deeply seeded convictions that stand in opposition to what rational evidence presents to oneself.
Despite its historical nature, Archangel thus has significant relevance to even our current times: the rights of women, anti-science politics, alteration of the environment, and hope in a better, prosperous, and enlightened future. By linking the stories through time Barrett is able to explore shifting attitudes through changing generations and individual lifespans. These are captivating stories that stand on rich character and solid foundations of setting rather than plot, and Barrett’s writing flows pleasingly with artistry without being bogged down with academic or haughty pretentiousness. I’m really thankful to have won the giveaway for this and am looking forward to discovering Barrett’s past work and seeing what is to come.
Disclaimer: I received a free advanced reading copy of this from the publisher via Goodreads’ First-reads giveaway program in exchange for an honest review. Review originally posted at Reading1000Lives.com
The five stories non-chronologically span from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, linked both by science and character relations, covering monumental discoveries of evolution, genetics, Einstein’s relativity, and particle physics over the sociopolitical historical backdrops of each ear. They therefore will appeal to readers that appreciate fiction that is historical, scientific, literary, or (like me) all three.
As a scientist I was immediately struck by how realistically Barrett portrays the practice of science. I often think that the genre term science fiction is better dubbed speculative fiction, or even technological fiction. Rarely is SF concerned with the actual process of science and its social implications, rather it becomes about future applications of science and their effects on life. I’ve always looked for science fiction that was realistically just that: fictionalized accounts of doing current or past science. In Archangel, the characters and stories themselves are infused with a sense of excitement, wonder, and impatience, yet also a bit of skepticism, doubt/uncertainty, and inadequacy. Barrett touches upon the differences between science and pseudoscience and the sometimes hazy divide that can appear between the two.
Ultimately, science is a social activity, it is not a cool Vulcanesque rationality divorced from humanity, culture, and relationships. Barrett’s recognition and exploration of this is what wraps the historic and scientific foundation of her writing with a delicate literary silk. The characters of Archangel exist in periods of world-shifting ideas that call into question the beliefs and assumptions of individuals and society. They must struggle with their own preconceptions and the expectations of others as they are confronted with new evidence and models of the universe. This is difficult when one has built their reputation on alternate ideas, when one’s respected and accomplished mentor is falling on the wrong side of scientific understanding/history, or when family members or the national culture have deeply seeded convictions that stand in opposition to what rational evidence presents to oneself.
Despite its historical nature, Archangel thus has significant relevance to even our current times: the rights of women, anti-science politics, alteration of the environment, and hope in a better, prosperous, and enlightened future. By linking the stories through time Barrett is able to explore shifting attitudes through changing generations and individual lifespans. These are captivating stories that stand on rich character and solid foundations of setting rather than plot, and Barrett’s writing flows pleasingly with artistry without being bogged down with academic or haughty pretentiousness. I’m really thankful to have won the giveaway for this and am looking forward to discovering Barrett’s past work and seeing what is to come.
Disclaimer: I received a free advanced reading copy of this from the publisher via Goodreads’ First-reads giveaway program in exchange for an honest review. Review originally posted at Reading1000Lives.com
June 27, 2013
Disclaimer: I won this book in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
I'm going to rate the stories in this book one by one, even though the stories obviously relate into one work of solid fiction. The first story is a young boy's discovery of science. The second, third, and fourth stories are all narratives of how different characters relate science and discovery into their lives. The last story is nostalgic and bitter, and ends with longing for home.
1st Story: The Investigators: 1 Star
A young boy named Constantine Boyd goes to his scientist uncle's house and learns and works. Honestly, this story bored the crap out of me. The character's didn't develop, and neither did the plot. There wasn't a climax, and the only reason I didn't put the rest of the book down is because the first story was boring as hell but well-written. Also, I noticed that the main character in this story reappears in the last one. So, I assumed that this story was our introduction to him so that he could develop in the last story.
2nd Story: The Ether of Space: 4 Stars
I had a little trouble grasping the scientific concepts at first, but once I began to understand, I was drawn into the story. I loved the characters, and the writing was fantastic. It was emotional and powerful, and was an exploration of science vs. faith(as the other 3 stories are), and I really loved that concept and how the characters struggled with this concept in their own way. The author seemed to be unbiased about which side she took, and simply presented what different characters thought and how it affected them.
3rd Story: The Island: 4 Stars
A brilliant exploration of faith, science, wisdom, friendship, and age. Yet again, science and religion are used to convey something different and wonderful.
4th Story: The Particles: 4 Stars
Same things as I said about the last two stories, but this story's conflict is more fast-paced and dramatic. Also, this story is set against the backdrop of World War II.
5th Story: Archangel
Constantine Boyd, why are you so boring and why do you have two stories? I liked the setting of this story (World War I), and the main conflict was interesting, but most of the story was just a boring dilly dally of random events and descriptions of boring things. Maybe I'm simply too stupid to understand the deep symbolism hidden deep within this story, but honestly I just know I was bored.
I'm just gonna pretend the first and fifth stories didn't happen, and give the book 4 stars. I can't wait to reread the middle 3 stories, because I feel like there's more to discover within them. Please, just ignore the 1st and 5th stories.
I'm going to rate the stories in this book one by one, even though the stories obviously relate into one work of solid fiction. The first story is a young boy's discovery of science. The second, third, and fourth stories are all narratives of how different characters relate science and discovery into their lives. The last story is nostalgic and bitter, and ends with longing for home.
1st Story: The Investigators: 1 Star
A young boy named Constantine Boyd goes to his scientist uncle's house and learns and works. Honestly, this story bored the crap out of me. The character's didn't develop, and neither did the plot. There wasn't a climax, and the only reason I didn't put the rest of the book down is because the first story was boring as hell but well-written. Also, I noticed that the main character in this story reappears in the last one. So, I assumed that this story was our introduction to him so that he could develop in the last story.
2nd Story: The Ether of Space: 4 Stars
I had a little trouble grasping the scientific concepts at first, but once I began to understand, I was drawn into the story. I loved the characters, and the writing was fantastic. It was emotional and powerful, and was an exploration of science vs. faith(as the other 3 stories are), and I really loved that concept and how the characters struggled with this concept in their own way. The author seemed to be unbiased about which side she took, and simply presented what different characters thought and how it affected them.
3rd Story: The Island: 4 Stars
A brilliant exploration of faith, science, wisdom, friendship, and age. Yet again, science and religion are used to convey something different and wonderful.
4th Story: The Particles: 4 Stars
Same things as I said about the last two stories, but this story's conflict is more fast-paced and dramatic. Also, this story is set against the backdrop of World War II.
5th Story: Archangel
Constantine Boyd, why are you so boring and why do you have two stories? I liked the setting of this story (World War I), and the main conflict was interesting, but most of the story was just a boring dilly dally of random events and descriptions of boring things. Maybe I'm simply too stupid to understand the deep symbolism hidden deep within this story, but honestly I just know I was bored.
I'm just gonna pretend the first and fifth stories didn't happen, and give the book 4 stars. I can't wait to reread the middle 3 stories, because I feel like there's more to discover within them. Please, just ignore the 1st and 5th stories.
September 3, 2013
I loved this book as I have loved most of Barrett's books. She does an excellent job in portraying small slices of the history of science. But, most of all, I love the way she takes her characters and holds them up to the light, much as one of the characters might hold a specimen or a formula or idea.
All of her characters relate in some way to science or to "fact" but they also relate to feelings and emotions--sometimes to their own surprise. This is illustrated best by Sam Cornelius, a character in "The Ether of Space" in this book: "What I do know is that the questions we ask about the world and the experiments we design to answer them are connect to our feelings."
All of her characters relate in some way to science or to "fact" but they also relate to feelings and emotions--sometimes to their own surprise. This is illustrated best by Sam Cornelius, a character in "The Ether of Space" in this book: "What I do know is that the questions we ask about the world and the experiments we design to answer them are connect to our feelings."
January 6, 2022
I am sad to say the 4- an 5-star reviewers here got much, much more from Archangel than I did.
My wife recently started watching Hallmark Channel programs. These are frequently so sappy sweet, with the lightest touch of conflict quickly erased with a hug and a kiss, that I simply can't stomach them. You see, this is exactly how I felt about Archangel.
In these characters and their situations, I never felt the wonder of new discovery, of being on the cusp of a forever-transformed world. I only wanted to turn the channel.
I didn't care about the study of blind fish, or the fate of ambulance drivers in Archangel, or... I only cared the book was short.
My wife recently started watching Hallmark Channel programs. These are frequently so sappy sweet, with the lightest touch of conflict quickly erased with a hug and a kiss, that I simply can't stomach them. You see, this is exactly how I felt about Archangel.
In these characters and their situations, I never felt the wonder of new discovery, of being on the cusp of a forever-transformed world. I only wanted to turn the channel.
I didn't care about the study of blind fish, or the fate of ambulance drivers in Archangel, or... I only cared the book was short.
May 26, 2022
Ostensibly interested in the history of science, this book divides it characters into good (the anxious, earnest and willing main character, the whimsical 'real' scientists) and the bad (the vain fake scientists) puts them into contexts that the author, at least, finds interesting and drags the reader along to make a hamfisted and kind of cliched point about knowledge or something. I don't know. It was a drag.
My feeling is, if you're so much more interested in talking about the history of science than in writing full-realized characters, then just write your non-fiction book and spare everyone involved.
My feeling is, if you're so much more interested in talking about the history of science than in writing full-realized characters, then just write your non-fiction book and spare everyone involved.
July 25, 2016
Another great collection by Andrea Barrett, one of my favorite authors. A wonderfully structured collection, too, the five stories create a nice symmetry with repeated characters and chronology. Readers of Barrett's previous collections and novels will recognize a few faces, as well as the name of a book or two.
January 19, 2020
1.5 Stars. The main issues that prevented me from enjoying this book is that I felt too bogged down in backstory and scientific/historical information. The stories seemed to drag on and I found myself needing to reread sections again to understand what was going on - and sometimes I’d still have no clue.
October 9, 2013
Interesting collection of stories that bring together scientific fact and fiction from a writer of exceptional prose. I think we need a new category -- "scientific fiction" - although when you Google scientific fiction, you get science fiction, so I guess that's not a good idea.
January 20, 2023
A small collection of stories, each one is historical fiction with a big focus on science or medicine. These were interesting, for the most part, but the characters seemed almost secondary to scientific progress (e.g., neighbors of the Wright brothers as they’re testing their flying machines). (6)
September 1, 2014
Oh, hi, I'm obsessed with Andrea Barrett's books, kthxbye.
September 22, 2018
I read this for a university writing class. I just haven't liked any of the books this professor required us to read this year. Happens sometimes.
April 18, 2020
Just couldn’t enjoy this book. Some of the writing was well done, and some of the characters had the potential, but the stories just didn’t engage me.
March 2, 2023
National book award, what??? No.
September 5, 2017
I do not usually enjoy books of short stories. So this book surprised me. It consists of five short stories, 30 to 40 pages long, and each is exquisite. The general theme is the introduction of new scientific ideas, and the stories take place in 1908, 1920, 1873,1939, and 1919 (in that order). The stories are intertwined, sometimes loosely, so there is a feeling of continuity throughout the collection. (The out-of-sequence dates serve almost as flash-backs.)
But it is the characters that make the stories (no surprise here!). We look into the inner thoughts and feelings of, for example, a young geneticist who is trying to discover how human traits are inherited (“The Particles”). This is in 1939, before many aspects of how genes function were known. This story exemplifies the turmoil and emotions that accompanied the introduction of a new theory, the competition between scientists, and the emotional toll. The geneticist is disparaged at a conference in an England on the verge of World War II. He thinks his mentor of early days no longer believes in him or cares about him. The geneticist, Sam, had been introduced to us as a young man in an earlier story where his mother, a science writer, is confronting arguments about Einstein’s theory in 1920 (“The Ether of Space”).
“The Island” (1873) deals with opposition to Darwin. A young school teacher, Henrietta Atkins, attends a biology seminar presented by an established biologist who does not believe in Darwin’s theory. Henrietta is convinced of his errors by a fellow student. This was a sea change for Henrietta. We see her as an eccentric older women in the first story “The Investigators” (1908). Constantine, a city dweller with an alcoholic father and stressed mother, is sent to his uncle’s farm for the summer. There he is exposed to a new world of inquiry. His uncle and his friends, including Henrietta, use the farm as a sort of laboratory for experiment with crop yields, animal breeding – almost anything relating to biology. We meet Constantine again in 1919 in “Archangel”, where he is a soldier in northern Russia at the end of World War I.
This book was remarkable, and I will read more of Andrea Barrett.
But it is the characters that make the stories (no surprise here!). We look into the inner thoughts and feelings of, for example, a young geneticist who is trying to discover how human traits are inherited (“The Particles”). This is in 1939, before many aspects of how genes function were known. This story exemplifies the turmoil and emotions that accompanied the introduction of a new theory, the competition between scientists, and the emotional toll. The geneticist is disparaged at a conference in an England on the verge of World War II. He thinks his mentor of early days no longer believes in him or cares about him. The geneticist, Sam, had been introduced to us as a young man in an earlier story where his mother, a science writer, is confronting arguments about Einstein’s theory in 1920 (“The Ether of Space”).
“The Island” (1873) deals with opposition to Darwin. A young school teacher, Henrietta Atkins, attends a biology seminar presented by an established biologist who does not believe in Darwin’s theory. Henrietta is convinced of his errors by a fellow student. This was a sea change for Henrietta. We see her as an eccentric older women in the first story “The Investigators” (1908). Constantine, a city dweller with an alcoholic father and stressed mother, is sent to his uncle’s farm for the summer. There he is exposed to a new world of inquiry. His uncle and his friends, including Henrietta, use the farm as a sort of laboratory for experiment with crop yields, animal breeding – almost anything relating to biology. We meet Constantine again in 1919 in “Archangel”, where he is a soldier in northern Russia at the end of World War I.
This book was remarkable, and I will read more of Andrea Barrett.
July 18, 2024
This is the third book by Andrea Barrett that I’ve read in the past month. I love her work. I don’t love every single story, but I love what she does in general. She’s very versatile. Most of her work is historical, but some takes place in the present day. She almost always writes about scientists of some kind, and she bases many of her characters and plots on real people and events. She creates characters that she personally likes and is interested in, and plugs them into each other’s stories.
For example, my favorite story in this collection, “The Investigators,” stars an adolescent boy, Constantine Boyd, in the year 1908. His home life in Detroit is troubled. So, his mom sends him to her brothers’ farms for the summers, to get a break from his dad and help his uncles. In 1908, he goes to his Uncle Taggart’s farm in Hammondsport, NY (many of Barrett’s stories take place in the Finger Lakes region). There, he becomes fascinated with aviation, and the reader senses that it will change his life. My favorite character from another Barrett collection, Henrietta Atkins, makes an appearance in this story.
Henrietta also appears in this collection in “The Island,” as a young woman fresh out of teachers’ college in 1873, studying for the summer with a famous naturalist professor, whose anti-Darwin views are challenged by some of his students (eventually including Henrietta).
And Constantine appears again in the last story in this book, as a draftee in World War One. The fighting in France has ended, and Constantine ends up in a disastrous Anglo-American expedition to help the White Russians fight the Bolsheviks. The reader connects Constantine’s fierce desire to survive the expedition to his discovery of his life purpose in the earlier story.
I love Constantine almost as much as I love Henrietta, and I will read more of Barrett’s work to see if he reappears.
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Author of The Saint's Mistress
For example, my favorite story in this collection, “The Investigators,” stars an adolescent boy, Constantine Boyd, in the year 1908. His home life in Detroit is troubled. So, his mom sends him to her brothers’ farms for the summers, to get a break from his dad and help his uncles. In 1908, he goes to his Uncle Taggart’s farm in Hammondsport, NY (many of Barrett’s stories take place in the Finger Lakes region). There, he becomes fascinated with aviation, and the reader senses that it will change his life. My favorite character from another Barrett collection, Henrietta Atkins, makes an appearance in this story.
Henrietta also appears in this collection in “The Island,” as a young woman fresh out of teachers’ college in 1873, studying for the summer with a famous naturalist professor, whose anti-Darwin views are challenged by some of his students (eventually including Henrietta).
And Constantine appears again in the last story in this book, as a draftee in World War One. The fighting in France has ended, and Constantine ends up in a disastrous Anglo-American expedition to help the White Russians fight the Bolsheviks. The reader connects Constantine’s fierce desire to survive the expedition to his discovery of his life purpose in the earlier story.
I love Constantine almost as much as I love Henrietta, and I will read more of Barrett’s work to see if he reappears.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog
Author of The Saint's Mistress
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