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Summary
Summary
A major novel by the author of "Ship Fever", winner of the 1996 National Book Award for fiction. Part adventure, part love story, this unforgettable novel captures a crucial moment in the history of exploration. Combining fact and fiction, the story focuses on Erasmus Darwin Wells, a 19th-century scholar/naturalist and his expedition to search for an open polar sea. NPR feature.
Author Notes
Andrea Barrett was born on July 17, 1965. She has taught in the M.F.A. program for writers at Warren Wilson College, and has been a visiting writer at several other colleges and universities, as well as teaching frequently at conferences such as the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.
She writes short stories and novels. Her short story collections include Servants of the Map, Archangel, and Ship Fever and Other Stories, which won the National Book Award in 1996 for the short story collection. She received the Distinguished Story Citation from Best American Short Stories in 1995 for The Littoral Zone and the 2015 Rea Award for the Short Story. Her short fiction has appeared in periodicals such as Mademoiselle and Prairie Schooner. Her novels include The Voyage of the Narwhal, Lucid Stars, Secret Harmonies, The Middle Kingdom, and The Forms of Water.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Having honed her craft in four previous novels and the NBA-winning short-story collection Ship Fever (1996), Barrett delivers a stunning novel in which a meticulous grasp of historical and natural detail, insight into character and pulse-pounding action are integrated into a dramatic adventure story with deep moral resonance. In Philadelphia in 1855, naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells40, unmarried and gripped by a despondent realization that his life is a failuresees a last chance to make his reputation as he prepares to accompany his future brother-in-law, Zechariah Voorhees, on a voyage to the arctic in search of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition. At 26, Zeke bristles with charisma, and a megalomaniacal sense of his own destiny. But loyal, naïve Erasmus doesn't grasp the scope of Zeke's recklessness and blind ambition until Zeke has committed a series of colossal and fatal blunders, subjecting his men to unspeakable privation, hunger, cold and danger. When the crew finally refuses to accompany Zeke on a foolhardy mission and he goes off alone and does not return on schedule, Erasmus is placed in an exquisite dilemma: whether to force the men to gamble on Zeke's unlikely survival as the ice closes in for a second winter, oras he knows he must doabandon the ship and begin a harrowing trek over land and water in hope of rescue. Erasmus's eventual return home, where he is scorned by journalists, who accuse him of cowardice, and by his sister, Lavinia, who is bereft of her hopes of marriage, is underscored by further ironies so potent that readers will finish the last third of the book in a fever of anticipation and dread. As Barrett describes the provisioning of the Narwhal, the flora and fauna of the arctic, the turbulent seas and breathtaking scenery, the plot seems slow to develop. But her careful depiction of all the charactersa humane ship's doctor; a cook who survived the Irish famine; and, back in Philadelphia, spirited Alexandra Copeland, whose presence in the Wells household as companion to Lavinia eventually leads to an affecting love storydeepens the narrative texture. Meanwhile, the extremes of both human behavior and naturelooming icebergs, fatal accidents, episodes of heroism, grisly discoveries of lost ships and dead men, the inexorable tyranny of winter darknessare described with an accuracy that make one forget that this is not a memoir but a work of the imagination. The denouement, when it arrives, is a triumph: a confluence of justice, retribution, spiritual faith, metamorphosis and love. Maps and illustrations. Agent, Wendy Weil; editor, Carol Houk Smith. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Barretts impeccably researched and stunningly written tale of a star-crossed Arctic voyagea logical successor to such earlier fiction as The Forms of Water (1993) and the National Book Awardwinning Ship Feveris, simply, one of the best novels of the decade. In a flexible, lucid prose that effortlessly communicates detailed information about navigation, natural history, and several related disciplines, Barrett tells the increasingly moving story of naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wellss ordeals: First, when hes on an 1855 expedition in search of explorer Sir John Franklins lost crew, an expedition led by Erasmuss rash, ego-driven future brother-in-law, Zechariah Voorhees; and second, when Erasmuss desertion of their ship (the Narwhal) and the presumed death of the missing Zeke poisons his reunion with his bereaved sister Lavinia and deepens his own fear that his life amounts to a history of failure. The narrative of the Narwhals exhausting, repetitive odyssey is artfully varied by Barretts sympathetic concentration on Erasmuss mixture of stoic dutifulness and excruciating self-doubt, and by her vivid portrayals of such secondary characters as ships cook Ned Kynd (a survivor of Irelands Potato Famine), its surgeon (and Erasmuss revered soulmate) Jan Boerhaave, Lavinias paid companion Alexandra Coleman (instrumental in Erasmuss eventual recall to life), and the Arctic Highlanders, whose inability to endure civilization rewrites all the explorers and scientists theories. Zeke himselfa megalomaniac with striking resemblances to Melvilles Ahabis the fulcrum on which Barrett springs a dazzling surprise that gives her disturbing climactic pages an almost symphonic richness. The intellectual range exhibited by this magnificent novel places its author in the rarefied company of great contemporary encyclopedic writers like Pynchon, Gaddis, and Harry Mulisch. One yearns for Barrett to treat in such exemplary detail the story of Jemmy Button, the Tierra del Fuegan Indian returned to London after Darwins voyage on the H.M.S.Beagle. You feel she could do full justice to it, or indeed whatever subject she chooses. (Author tour)
Booklist Review
Barrett has already won the National Book Award for Ship Fever [BKL Ja 1 & 15 96], but her newest book, a dynamic and insightful historical novel, is even more prizeworthy. Once again, Barrett has steeped herself in the past, in this case, the annals of Arctic exploration, and responded with keenly perception and original fiction rich with imaginative forays into the minds of both real-life people and invented characters. Her focus is the 1855 voyage of the Narwhal, which was organized to find the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin, but in this telling metamorphoses into something far more complicated due to the passions of the captain and his close associate, the scholarly naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells. Their Arctic ordeal is a classic tale of the sea complete with mythic danger, maniacal quests, and the terrible beauty and dangers of the ocean itself. Authoritative and imaginative on all fronts, Barrett tells a gripping story shaped by masterful interpretations of the paradigms of science and the volatile nature of the mind, a wilderness every bit as challenging as the forbidding Arctic. --Donna Seaman
Library Journal Review
From the 1996 National Book Award winner for the story collection Ship Fever comes this novel about scholar-naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells, who accompanies the Narwhal on its daring polar expedition. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Part I | |
| 1. His Lists (May 1855) | p. 15 |
| 2. Past the Cave Where the Cold Arises (June-July 1855) | p. 41 |
| 3. A Riot of Objects (July-August 1855) | p. 83 |
| 4. A Little Detour (August-September 1855) | p. 117 |
| Part II | |
| 5. The Ice in Its Great Abundance (October 1855-March 1856) | p. 145 |
| 6. Who Hears the Fishes When They Cry? (April-August 1856) | p. 187 |
| 7. The Goblins Known as Innersuit (August-October 1856) | p. 227 |
| Part III | |
| 8. Toodlamik, Skin and Bones (November 1856-March 1857) | p. 249 |
| 9. A Big Stone Slipped from His Grasp (April-August 1857) | p. 289 |
| 10. Specimens of the Native Tribes (September 1857) | p. 335 |
| 11. The Nightmare Skeleton (October 1857-August 1858) | p. 369 |
| Author's Note and Acknowledgments | p. 395 |
| Note on the Illustrations | p. 399 |
