Andrea Barrett

Autumn, 1916. America is preparing to enter WWI, but at Tamarack State Hospital, the danger is barely felt. Here in the crisp, mountain air where wealthy tuberculosis patients recover in private cottages and charity patients, mostly European emigres, fill the sanatorium, time stands still. Prisoners of routine and yearning for absent families, the inmates take solace in gossip, rumour and secret attachments. One enterprising patient initiates a weekly discussion group, but his well-meaning efforts lead instead to tragedy and betrayal. The war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice and vigilante sentiment. Andrea Barrett pits power and privilege against unrest and thwarted desire in a spellbinding tale of individual lives in a nation on the verge of extraordinary change.

En las expediciones de mediados del XIX, las rónicas siempre retrataban al escritor como un héroe. Pero ¿qué pasaba realmente allá arriba, en la larga oscuridad invernal, atrapados por el hielo? A traves de Erasmus Darwin Welles, un erudito naturalista que forma parte de la expedicion del Narwha l, conocemos a la tripulacion y experimentamos los misterios del Artico. El mejor regalo para los amantes de las buenas novelas de aventuras.

Siglo XIX y expedición al Ártico en un mismo libro sólo pueden significar una trepidante novela de aventuras. Y es que el protagonista de la historia, Erasmus Darwin Welles, un erudito naturalista caracterizado por su poder de observacion y capacidad descriptiva, es el mejor narrador que el autor ha podido encontrar para hacernos vivir una historia de aventuras.

Set in New England, The Forms of Water is a superb exploration of the complexities of family life, grief and the ties that continue to bind us to the past. At the age of eighty, Brendan Auberon, a former monk, is now confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home. As a last wish, he is desperate to catch a final glimpse of the two hundred acres of woodland on which once stood his parental home. Half a century ago, the owners of the land were evicted from their homes and the land was flooded to create a reservoir which would provide water for the big city. The Forms of Water is the story of what happens when Brendan convinces his staid nephew Henry to hijack the nursing home van to make this ancestral visit. What begins as a joke becomes infinitely more complex as the family roles begin to rearrange themselves. A rich and absorbing look at the complexities of family life, at grief and at the ties that continue to bind us to the past.

Exceptional tales of emancipation and evolution at the birth of the modern era. Winner of US National Book Award. Andrea Barretts work stands out for its sheer intelligence. The overall effect is quietly dazzling. New York Times Set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century, this elegant collection of stories take their impulse from the world of science. Interweaving historical and fictional characters, they illuminate the secret passions of those driven by a devotion to, and an intimate acquaintance with, the natural world. Barretts stories fascinateshe pulls us into them as into fast-moving water. San Francisco Chronicle Beautiful stories about the wonder and work of science. The title novella describes the horrors of typhus in the newly arrived Irish immigrants to Quebec, and suggests that, in epidemics, medicine is more a piece of politics than a form of science. In Barretts hands, science is transformed from hard and known fact into malleable, strange and thrilling fictional material. Boston Globe An extraordinary story collection. Barrett blends a sure grasp of the history and method of science into each of her evocative tales. Chicago Tribune Many of these stories are set in the late nineteenth century, the adolescence of modern science. Barretts women are often scoffed at for their love of learning. Some try to use science as a currency with which to buy acceptance in a male-dominated world. But no character relates only to his or her work. Barrett builds her fictions like stones thrown into prose ponds: science is the stone, while human dramas, personal and social, are the concentric rings that radiate beautifully outward. Newsday

NATIONAL BOOK AWARDUn libro de relatos breves y elegantes sobre el amor a la ciencia y la ciencia del amor. Entretejiendo personajes históricos y de ficción, abarcan el pasado y el presente a medida que negocian el complejo territorio de la ambicion, el fracaso, el logro y los sueños rotos.Darwin, Linneo o Mendel aparecen en las paginas de estas historias mezclados con las vidas de parejas de ficcion. La ciencia se transforma de hecho duro y conocido en material de ficcion maleable, extraño y emocionante. La misma Andrea Barrett señala: "Siempre he estado muy interesada en los que practican la ciencia y en sus historias. Lo que mas me interesa es la historia natural. En su apogeo, a mediados y finales del siglo XIX, cuando la gente salia y reunia los primeros grandes depositos de datos e intentaba entender que era lo que vivia y crecia en todas partes, habia una sensacion de frescura en esa busqueda. Era muy emocionante".En la tradicion de Alice Munro y William Trevor, estas ficciones exquisitas abarcan vidas enteras en un breve espacio.

A lyrical, moving novel of the choices and confusions that face a married woman whose understanding of herself explodes on first contact with the energies of China and a Chinaman. Grace Hoffmeier is never quite sure where to invest her energies: in her dying marriage to star scientist Walter or in the possible affairs that flare so startlingly before her like fireworks; in her work or in her home; in things or in people; in the past or in the future. On an eye-opening trip to a China that has ripped itself apart, yet again, at its very heart in Tiananmen Square, Grace finds with guidance from unexpected quarters that what you can choose between is not always your choice to make. The real China soon crackles into being before Grace; its fire and light illuminate for her paths old and new, and a new life in a new kingdom.

Un libro de relatos breves y elegantes sobre el amor a la ciencia y la ciencia del amor.En la mejor tradición de Alice Munro y William Trevor.

Autumn, 1916. America is preparing to enter WWI, but at Tamarack State Hospital, the danger is barely felt. Here in the crisp, mountain air where wealthy tuberculosis patients recover in private cottages and charity patients, mostly European emigres, fill the sanatorium, time stands still. Prisoners of routine and yearning for absent families, the inmates take solace in gossip, rumour and secret attachments.One enterprising patient initiates a weekly discussion group, but his well-meaning efforts lead instead to tragedy and betrayal. The war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice and vigilante sentiment. Andrea Barrett pits power and privilege against unrest and thwarted desire in a spellbinding tale of individual lives in a nation on the verge of extraordinary change.

A national hardback bestseller in the US another magnificently imagined and executed book of historical fiction with a contemporary twist, from one of the masters of the form. These stories possess a wonderful clarity and ease, the serene authority of a writer working at the very height of her powers. New York Times Ranging across two centuries, and from the western Himalayas to an Adirondack village, Servants of the Map travels the territories of yearning and awakening, of loss and unexpected discovery. A mapper of the highest mountain peaks, engaged on the trigonometrical measurement of British India, realizes his true obsession while in deflationary correspondence with his far-off wife. A young woman afire with scientific curiosity must come to terms with a romantic fantasy. Brothers and sisters, torn apart at an early age, are beset by dreams of reunion. Throughout, Barretts most characteristic theme the happenings in that borderland between science and desire unfolds in the diverse lives of unforgettable human beings.

`A great, shivery, seductive read. Elle Intelligent, accessible literary fiction of the highest order. Superbly dramatic and beautifully readable. A terrific tale of high endeavour and polar peril, this is the story of a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1855 and the women the explorers left behind. A brilliant portrait of Victorian society obsessed with mapping and classifying everything under the sun including the icy Arctic where theemancipation of women and the evolution of species are the next great revolutions just stirring into life.

Contadas con la elegancia característica de Barrett, su pasión por la ciencia y su maravilloso ojo para el mundo natural, las historias psicológicamente astutas y conmovedoras reunidas en esta coleccion evocan las formas en que las vidas y expectativas de las mujeres (en las familias, en el trabajo y en el amor) han cambiado a lo largo de mas de un siglo. Vinculados entre si, estos cuentos culminan brillantemente para revelar como los acontecimientos mas pequeños del pasado pueden tener grandes repercusiones a traves de las generaciones, y cuan potente, maravillosa y extraña puede ser la relacion entre la historia y la memoria.

Contadas con la elegancia característica de Barrett, su pasión por la ciencia y su maravilloso ojo para el mundo natural, las historias psicológicamente astutas y conmovedoras reunidas en esta coleccion evocan las formas en que las vidas y expectativas de las mujeres (en las familias, en el trabajo y en el amor) han cambiado a lo largo de mas de un siglo. Vinculados entre si, estos cuentos culminan brillantemente para revelar como los acontecimientos mas pequeños del pasado pueden tener grandes repercusiones a traves de las generaciones, y cuan potente, maravillosa y extraña puede ser la relacion entre la historia y la memoria.