A collection of stories that consider the struggles of love and science includes the title work, in which a young Canadian doctor, treating Irish immigrants who have been driven out by the Great Famine, experiences one of history's most tragic epidemics
Science and love are the subjects of these short stories and a novella. Winner of the 1996 National Book Award.
Estimated Ship Dimensions:
8.5
inches length
x
5.5
inches width
x 0.75
inches height
Estimated Ship Weight:
0.65
pound
other Info.
Online Item #: 11404725
Store Item Number (DPCI): 248-02-2567
ISBN: 9780393316001
Item can be gift wrapped.
Made in the USA or Imported
Reviewer: Thomas Mallon, (New York Times Book Review)
"There is an artificiality to some of this maneuvering, and a tendency to spell out connections...and yet Ms. Barrett's scientific bent is sufficiently rare among fiction writers, and her concoctions so cunningly mixed, that dissatisfaction seems out of place...Ms. Barrett's narrative laboratory is stocked with a handsome array of equipment. She tells her stories through alternating voices, diaries, letters--whatever seems to hint at the most promising results...her work stands out for its sheer intelligence, its painstaking attempt to discern and describe the world's configuration. The overall effect is quietly dazzling, like looking at handmade paper under a microscope."
Reviewer: Molly E. Rauch, (Nation)
"In her new collection...she is as meticulous as any chemist, entomologist, or doctor...Barrett renders the world as shifting, disappointing, and curiously baffling...The stories that take place in the past--half of this collection--suffer from stumbles into prissy formalism...Barrett shines when she dives into the bloody soup of human frailty...Science, for Barrett, is not the unalloyed discipline of discovery and patience. In these stories it is a hell of despair and rivalry...The writing...is also a science, shot through with the blaze of discovery."
Reviewer: Nathalie op de Beeck, (Washington Post Book World)
"[This] novella and seven short stories represent an imaginative departure for the author. Even when these new tales follow the dysfunctional-family formula, they have an experimental edge..."
Reviewer: Michael E. Elliott, (Boston Book Review)
"...Barrett explores the territory between the head and the heart, between science and sentiment, not to show how the two terrains rival one another, but how much they overlap....At their best, these seven stories and title novella burn with the 'fever' of the book's title..."
"European gentry, wild American sisters, and smart, starving immigrants populate these stories, which rove over centuries....The title novella is devastating: as with every story here, you enter right into it, and cannot entirely leave it behind."
