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Epicurus.com - Ship Fever
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
Your Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780393316001
ISBN: 0393316009
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 254
Publication Date: 1996-12
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Editorial Reviews:
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1996 National Book Award Winner for Fiction. The elegant short fictions gathered hereabout the love of science and the science of love are often set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century. Interweaving historical and fictional characters, they encompass both past and present as they negotiate the complex territory of ambition, failure, achievement, and shattered dreams. In "Ship Fever," the title novella, a young Canadian doctor finds himself at the center of one of history's most tragic epidemics. In "The English Pupil," Linnaeus, in old age, watches as the world he organized within his head slowly drifts beyond his reach. And in "The Littoral Zone," two marine biologists wonder whether their life-altering affair finally was worth it. In the tradition of Alice Munro and William Trevor, these exquisitely rendered fictions encompass whole lives in a brief space. As they move between interior and exterior journeys, "science is transformed from hard and known fact into malleable, strange and thrilling fictional material" (Boston Globe).
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Comment: Ship Fever is a beautiful colelction of short stories and the titular novella covering the lives of famous scientists and their apostles. Mendel gets his due, as do Carol Linneaus and Darwin and Alfred Wallace. Each story here is a gem (with the exception of "The Marburg Sisters" which I didn't take to.) The novella Ship Fever is the heartbreaking story of a young physician with lofty goals for recognition caught in the middle of a typhus epidemic among Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine; this story and 'Rare Bird', of a young woman with scientific ambitions growing up in 18th century London, were two of the best things that I have read in ages. This collection is HIGHLY recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Science + Short Stories = Love!
Comment: Meeting one of the legends of science in a short story is such a pleasure. Some of the stories in this collection feature such encounters, while others tell the tales of unknown scientists and clinicians. They are beautiful fusions of art and science, stories about the human beings behind the practice. As a lover of both science and literature, I felt like these stories were written just for me. Hurray for science in fiction (very different from science fiction)!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett
Comment: WOW. If you are used to reading material which has been "dumbed down" for the masses, you are in for a treat this time. There is no dumbing down in Barrett's writings. In fact, you'd best be on your intellectual toes. I've always liked books from which I can actually LEARN, and this collection of short stories certainly taught me well on considerable topics. Not always easy to swallow, because the author tells it like it is, it nevertheless provides interesting concepts and information that you may have never considered had you not picked up this book. Her descriptions of yellow fever and shiploads of immigrants from Ireland will make you hold a handkerchief to your nose! Excellent writing from a formidable author. Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good reading, for good nights
Comment: I recently picked up this book on the suggestion of a book-of-the-day calendar. When I went to pick it up at the library, I couldn't even remember why I thought it was so particularly intriguing. Short stories about science? Who wants to read about string theory and relativity? But being a shallow bibliophile, I found I liked the Audoboneque cover and brought it home. Several nights later, I pulled it out of my stack of bedside books (not to be confused with the sofa-side books, the bathroom books, the kichen books, the office books, or the car books) and found that I have never come across a more intelligent set of short stories in my life. I can say that the writing in this book is so good, it is nothing short of a small miracle.
In the first story a woman recounts her life with her gardener immigrant grandfather, who was a friend of Mendel's, telling how he died and the legacy of his friendship. In another, two competing 18th century naturalists try to survive the wilderness. Linneaus, in his decline, sees the ghosts of his assistants, who died young in the name of science. These are easily some of the best short stories I have ever read--and I'm including Englander's Unbearable Urges and just about everything I ever read in school, including Hardy.
So don't let the science theme put you off--it's a brilliantly done theme. Take this one with on a car trip to enhance your travels through nature, or put it on your bedside table for a nice read before bedtime. Either way, you'll enjoy them more than you thought. As for myself, I feel that Barrett is one of the single best writers alive--she has the simplicity of Pearl S. Buck, and the imaginative intelligence (there's that word again) of any of the world's best writers. Enjoy.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Alice Munro-like biology, zoology and virology-themed stories
Comment: The (almost 100-page long) title-story, which makes up one-third of the book, follows Dr. Lauchlin Grant as he leaves home, near that of a beloved married childhood friend, and travels to Grosse Isle to help with ship-fever-afflicted patients living there under quarantine. It is set in 1847, when thousands of impoverished Irish emigrants left their famine ravished country and traveled in crowded ships, often plagued with typhus, to immigrate to Canada. The other seven stories, of a more conventional length, have in common, biology, zoology and/or biochemistry. The Behavior of the Hawkweeds is peripherally about Mendel's peas; The English Pupil, an elderly, former zoology professor with memory problems, and Rare Bird (my favorite), the life of a science-minded woman stuck in a Jane Austen-like world-both are set in the 1700s and are marginally related; The Marburg sisters looks at twin biochemistry-majors; and Birds with No Feet follows a regrettably unsuccessful Darwin-like zoologist. I didn't care for either of the two set in more recent times: The Littoral Zone, an affair, and Soroche, a widow's handling of her husband's estate and thoughts about a long past encounter. Fans of the sciences will probably enjoy this collection of stories more than the average reader. Alice Munro consistently produces stories of similar caliber, although without the biology/zoology/virology connection. Fans of the story Ship Fever may especially like Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, Mountains Upon Mountains by Tracy Kidder, and possibly Typhoid Mary by Judith Walzer Leavitt. Others may like The Double Helix by James D. Watson and possibly Life of Pi by Yann Martel.
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