Ship Fever and Other Stories (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Andrea Barrett
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Short stories
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Love or romance, Nature, Marriage, Science or scientists, Human race, Typhoid fever, Evolution
The central thematic device that unifies Andrea Barrett’s stories and gives them their originality is that they all focus on characters caught up in pursuits in the natural sciences, and they all suggest that a vulnerable human element lies behind the scientific impulse. Many of the stories are historical fictions in the classic sense that they involve real people from the past, often very famous scientists such as Gregor Mendel and Carl Linnaeus, and they present the past as it impinges upon and informs the present. They are written in a straightforward, uncluttered, and transparent...
[The entire page is 2060 words long]
