Review by Booklist Review
Readers new to Barrett will be entranced by the intricate beauty of her prose, her acute sense of place, and the vibrant inner lives and daring decisions of her intriguing and unusual characters. Readers who have been spellbound by her previous works, from Ship Fever (1996) to Archangel (2013), will have the added pleasure of reuniting with some of Barrett's protagonists, especially scientist turned high-school science teacher Henrietta Atkins. Here we encounter Henrietta in her New York State village both as an adult and a precocious girl during the Civil War who is hired out to a family with two sons missing in action. Spiraling through time and Henrietta's "complicated family tree," these subtly linked, saturated, and enthralling tales dissect gender roles in portrayals of families running a nineteenth-century pottery business and a winery during Prohibition, a woman compiling a Civil War history but more inclined to write historical fiction, and a young woman determined to become a pilot in the wake of a disastrous 1920 air show. Then there's a provocative mirroring, a century later, of Henrietta's experiences as a pioneering woman scientist at a fateful summer gathering in the Adirondacks. Barrett transforms deep knowledge of history, science, and human nature into gorgeously vital and insightful stories in which every element is richly brewed, mulled, and redolent.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
National Book Award winner Barrett (Ship Fever) offers a finely crafted linked collection about memory and science. "Wonders of the Shore," named after a fictional 1889 study of marine life by Daphne Bannister, introduces the close and longtime friendship between Daphne and Henrietta Atkins, a lepidopterist and schoolteacher in Central New York. In the brilliant and complex "The Regimental History," 10-year-old Henrietta takes dictation for a family whose two sons enlisted in the Union Army and catalogs the sons' letters. The story ends more than a quarter century later with a meeting between Henrietta and the soldiers' nephew with an amateur historian, in which Henrietta's sharp memory yields striking revelations. The highlight, "The Accident," features Henrietta's niece Caroline, whose account of a life-changing aviation disaster Daphne retells after meeting Caroline at an air show in 1922. In the lengthy title story, which becomes a bit diffuse with its dizzying blending of family trees, old friends Dierdre Banks and Rose Marburg, a descendent of Henrietta, attend an annual retreat of biologists in the Adirondacks in 2018. Still, Barrett offers well-observed details of the region, and Dierdre and Rose's imbalanced friendship makes for an intriguing parallel to Henrietta and Daphne, as Rose is now a schoolteacher after showing early promise while Dierdre is a star biologist. This offers rich rewards. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In six stories set mostly in central New York State, Natural History revisits the family of scientists, teachers, and innovators the expansive Barrett has featured regularly since her National Book Award-winning collection Ship Fever. From passengers quarantined while on cruise to a woman explaining to her barstool companion that she has ESP to a hyena loose in the south of France, I Walk Between the Raindrops shows off the award-winning Boyle's trenchant prose (50,000-copy first printing). In Bliss Montage, NYPL Young Lion Ma (Severance) reveals the absurdism of the everyday through push-the-envelope stories featuring a woman living with all her former boyfriends, relationships based on an invisibility drug, and the idea that burying oneself alive can cure all manner of ills (75,000-copy first printing). From prolific, icepick-exact short story writer Means, a Pushcart and O. Henry honoree, Two Nurses, Smoking explores grief and survival in pieces ranging from two nurses exchanging quiet support in a parking lot to a couple reuniting on the ski slopes after having met in a bereavement group.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Henrietta Atkins and one Marburg sister return from Ship Fever (1996), Barrett's National Book Award winner, in interlinked stories ranging across half a century. Henrietta occupies center stage in the first three stories. "Wonders of the Shore" takes her to an island off the New Hampshire coast for an 1885 summer vacation with her friend Daphne. Barrett delicately contrasts Henrietta's life as a high school biology teacher in Crooked Lake, her central New York hometown, with Daphne's profitable career as a science writer and pseudonymous cookbook author; she plumbs the women's complex relationship and provides a surprise ending that reveals Henrietta making an unexpected decision about herself and her future. In "The Regimental History," she is a bright, inquisitive 10-year-old fascinated by the letters of a Union soldier, later learning of the soldier's sad decline from his nephew, who's one of her students. In fewer than 50 pages, Barrett considers the cost of war, the duplicity of leaders, and the nurturing bond between a young person and an inspired teacher. "Henrietta and Her Moths" also ranges through time to trace Henrietta's efforts to help her sister, Hester, through pregnancy and motherhood and to provide a vivid glimpse of Henrietta's ability to convey the excitement of scientific observation to her charges, including Caroline, her tempestuous niece. Caroline has become an aviator in "The Accident," which captures both the joy of flight and the cruelty of class privilege with Barrett's characteristic subtlety and cleareyed compassion. In "Open House," another of Henrietta's students faces a conflict that underpins the entire collection: The bonds that tie people to family and community are challenged by the ambition to find a place in the larger world. That theme becomes explicit in the title story, which finds Rose Marburg in 2018 reflecting on her choice to abandon scientific work that led others to a Nobel Prize. As always, Barrett depicts the natural world and the human heart with wonder, tenderness, and deep understanding. More superb work from an American master. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
