The writer Andrea Barrett tends her stories and her characters with the patience and precision of a scientist. Characters grow a little bit, disappear, then re-emerge two books later. Plotlines and people like plants sprouting up, reaching for the sun.
Andrea Barrett has an excuse. She'd probably call it an explanation, because the woman who is now counted among America's finest fiction writers is a scientist. Biology and zoology. That accounts for the detail, but Barrett's work encompasses more than a fascination with a beetle's wing. It dips back into history, back into a time when scientists were travelers, adventurers, and explorers, with all the incumbent passions and emotional preoccupations, love, envy, sorrow, and wistfulness.
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Andrea Barrett, National Book Award-winning author of ?Ship Fever,? ?Voyage of the Narwhal,? and most recently, ?Servants of the Map.?
Andrea Barrett: For me, its all knitted together. listen
Andrea Barrett If you let it sit around for a century and a half, society can get it. listen
