- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo; First edition edition (17 Jun 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007139918
- ISBN-13: 978-0007139910
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,145,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Servants of the Map
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Product Description
Review
‘Servants of the Map confirms how deserving Barrett is to be ranked with Alice Munro and the other great North American storytellers of the moment… It is the precision of her words, and the intelligence with which she creates bonds between characters from an age so different from our own, that makes reading her such a joy.’ Economist
‘Andrea Barrett has a talent for reaching to the essence of experience… The passage in which Lavinia speaks of what makes her happy is as poignant and intense as anything I can remember reading for a long time, as radiantly illuminating, in its way, as the famous passage in Wuthering Heights when Catherine describes her idea of perfect weather.’ Barry Unsworth
'Gorgeous, illuminating, entrancing fiction… The scientific themes that made Barrett's novel The Voyage of the Narwhal and her NBA-winning collection Ship Fever two of the most unusual literary successes of their decade again predominate in this superb new gathering of four stories and two novellas.' (Starred) Kirkus Reviews
‘Barrett demonstrates originality and wit throughout a most distinguished collection of stories.’ Barry Unsworth, New York Times
‘Spellbinding….Complex yet ravishing tales of scientific pursuits stoked by loneliness and desire.’ Booklist
‘Gemlike stories that sparkle with intelligence and fire.’ Lisa Shea, Oprah magazine
'Barrett's rapidly growing reputation as one of the finest writers at work today will assure a substantial audience for this radiant collection… Familiar figures appear and reappear in more than one story, and many readers will be able to make connections between these tales and Barrett's earlier works. Yet each is rich and independent and beautiful and should draw Barrett many new admirers.' Publishers Weekly
‘A wonderful clarity and ease, the serene authority of a writer working at the very height of her powers.’ Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
Daily Telegraph
' Andrea Barrett uses fiction to skirt historical fact, and it is a balance she treads well... radiant with scientific detail '
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First Sentence
HE DOES NOT WRITE to his wife about the body found on a mountain that is numbered but still to be named: not about the bones, the shreds of tent, the fragile, browning skull. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
HE DOES NOT WRITE to his wife about the body found on a mountain that is numbered but still to be named: not about the bones, the shreds of tent, the fragile, browning skull. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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13 reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
A Work of Astonishing Fiction
3 Feb 2002
Format:Hardcover
Andrea Barrett has done it again. This collection of short stories has all the characteristics that placed Ship Fever and Voyage of the Narwhale among the most accomplished fictions of our time. The lucid and lovely prose, the ruthless honesty, the shocking psychological insight, compassion and deep research of the earlier works is here, but Ms Barrett continues to grow as a writer. These new stories are her most assured, most daring and most wonderfully realized yet. I have followed Ms Barrett's fiction from Lucid Stars, her first novel, to Servants of the Map with growing admiration and wonder. She is a major talent and this is a lovely book.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Wonderous
31 Mar 2002
Format:Hardcover
I discovered Andrea Barrett when I read Voyage of the Narwhal, an epic story of courage, devotion, and the struggle with the northern latitudes that captured so many imaginations during the 19th century. I enjoyed that book tremendously. I wasn't disappointed in this collection of short stories.
Andrea Barrett has a great ability when it comes to developing characters. From Max Vigne, a hard working member of a mapping expedition in the area of Northern India in the title story, Servant of the Map" to his wife Clara that makes a major appearance in the final story "The Cure", all her characters are real. Almost real enough, it seems, to reach out and touch.
Each story stands on its own. But the way Ms Barrett weaves the stories together if fabulous. The final story, by the way, is connected to her book, Voyage of the Narwhal. Ned Kynd, an inn keeper in the "The Cure" played a major role in the novel.
I think readers appreciate these connections with past reads. It shows that the author respects the intelligence of the reader and isn't afraid to say that perhaps that story wasn't quite finished.
Finally, Barrett is a wonderful story teller. One can read along in any of these stories and almost take for granted what one is reading. Then all of a sudden a major twist in the story, or some new development with the character, or a connection with something you've read before.
Read this book.
Andrea Barrett has a great ability when it comes to developing characters. From Max Vigne, a hard working member of a mapping expedition in the area of Northern India in the title story, Servant of the Map" to his wife Clara that makes a major appearance in the final story "The Cure", all her characters are real. Almost real enough, it seems, to reach out and touch.
Each story stands on its own. But the way Ms Barrett weaves the stories together if fabulous. The final story, by the way, is connected to her book, Voyage of the Narwhal. Ned Kynd, an inn keeper in the "The Cure" played a major role in the novel.
I think readers appreciate these connections with past reads. It shows that the author respects the intelligence of the reader and isn't afraid to say that perhaps that story wasn't quite finished.
Finally, Barrett is a wonderful story teller. One can read along in any of these stories and almost take for granted what one is reading. Then all of a sudden a major twist in the story, or some new development with the character, or a connection with something you've read before.
Read this book.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Mapping the contours of the heart
2 Mar 2002
Format:Hardcover
This is a brilliantly written collection of stories that seamlessly meshes fact with fiction, science with love and faith, and the pursuit of exploration and discovery with the satisfaction of the simpler life. There are so many interesting insights into the emotions of her created characters that we wonder if there is any parallel with the lives of real adventurers.
The opening title story of SERVANTS OF THE MAP starts us off well. The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India begun in the mid 19th century was a grand exercise of mapping the sub-continent. The map contours of interest were the peaks and valleys of the "still to be named" mountains of northern India. We meet Max Vignes, a draughtsman who when not sketching the details of what would later be the Himalayas, was looking down and passionately observing plants, leaves, and lichen. Max is obsessed with botany and the real mapping done by Barrett is of the contours of Max's heart. We see him torn between his love for his wife Clare and his two daughters and his all consuming scientific enthrallment with plants.
This is just the first story and yet Barrett's technique of interweaving the real and the imagined, and her theme of scientific enquiry juxtaposed against the demands of the human heart, are both already fully developed and flowering. She goes on to explore this some more with "Two Rivers" where academically inclined Samuel seeks to disprove all non-theological explanations for fossils. We are transported to the world of emerging Darwinism and Barrett uses Samuel to investigate the inner difficulty of reconciling oneself to change and adapting to a new world-view. It's an issue that has as much resonance today as it did in Samuel's world of 100 years ago.
Other stories where this inner geography is explored are "Theories of Rain" and "The Forest" and some of the colorful characters are Aunt's Daphne and Jane, Bianca Marburg, and Nora Kynd who appears in the last story "The Cure". Max, Clare and their daughter Elizabeth also make a return. In a fitting summation to the book Clare shows her ambivalence to Max's return. It's a perfect illustration of the truth that with the human heart there will always be undiscovered territory. "I do love him," she says. "Or I did - how can I know what I feel anymore..."
This is my first book by Barrett but I've already begun what I can only hope is an equally enjoyable journey with another one.
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