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I discovered Andrea Barrett via this thoroughly researched narrative about 19th-century Arctic exploration, and she's now one of the authors whose work I snap up as soon as it appears in hardback. Her talent is in combining science with literature in a fascinating and accessible way. Here she manages to combine 19th-century concerns (emancipation of slaves, theories of evolution, an obsession with the Arctic) with more modern ones -- the role of women (who have to stay at home and wait), personal growth, cultural imperialism, and how 'truth' is relative. She reminds me of George Eliot in the way that she takes a generous view even of the least admirable characters. Early in the novel, her main character, Erasmus Wells, a repressed and unsuccessful 40-something naturalist, writes:[return][return]"If I drew that scene I'd show everything happening at once ... But when I describe it in words one thing follows another and everything's shaped by my single pair of eyes, my single voice. I wish I could show it as if through a fan of eyes. Widening out from my single perspective to several viewpoints, then many, so the whole picture might appear and not just my version of it."[return][return]This is how the novel is written -- it doesn't always work (notably in the case of trying to put across the experience of an Eskimo woman transplanted to Philadelphia). But it does give you a sense of the many different versions of reality, and it is beautifully written.

2022-10-01 09:12