My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
A fellow bus-rider lent me this book to break up the non-fiction I wasn't getting through in my reading (slow reading? non-reading?) of Democracy in America. I tore through it in a couple of days—really couldn't put it down!
Author Andrea Barrett includes several short stories in this volume, all with a historical, naturalist/science bend to them. Whether we discover a connection with Mendel or Linnaeus or ponder the same mysteries they did, we get inserted into their lives in an interesting way. Or perhaps a better way to say it would be that we find the lives of the stories' characters intertwined with the historical figure.
The title story, Ship Fever follows some of the events of the Potato Famine in that we join a young doctor on a Canadian island while the ships empty sick Irish refugees onto shore.
None of the stories are very uplifting. None of the characters live "happily ever after" and many are fairly miserable. Many of the stories, perhaps even all of them, lack closure; they just end when they do—not really hanging, but just ended and not resolved. (Please note this is not criticism, just a comment on an interesting style that isn't completely to my taste.)
Perhaps only our visit with Linnaeus could be considered "happy". As he reviews his colleagues, acquaintances and students and their achievements, we find that he isn't unfulfilled but strangely content. Even in the limitations brought on by his stroke, he appears satisfied with the events of his life. (Only later do I find out about his faith.)
Overall, it is a good book and one I am glad to have read.
