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Miscellany

Literature Reviews

By Erica Eisdorfer

The Air We Breathe

by Andrea Barrett
(Norton, 320 pages)

Andrea Barrett does what she does better than anyone else, and that is to combine hard science with beautifully wrought fiction. Barrett has the ability to ensnare her readers in a story, wrap a character around us and then fill us up with information–hard facts, made palatable. In her National Book Award-winning collection of stories, Ship Fever, she told us about the inner life of Gregor Mendel and explained his experiemnts. In The Voyage of the Narwhal, she infected her readers with the Arctic Fever common to the 19th century American and illustrated the plight of the Eskimaux. And here, in The Air We Breathe, is the tuberculosis epidemic of pre WWI America. We see the lace-like quality of a tuberculer lung illuminated by an X-ray, that technology still in its infancy. We watch as the disease progresses. And what it is that holds us still, reading quietly, are the patients themselves: Miles, the wealthy patriot, recuperating in his charming cottage and Leo, the immigrant in the public sanatorium.

The Air We Breathe examines a point in our time, when, with our nation at the cusp of war, we held our collective breath. 

Interred With Their Bones
Jennifer Lee Carrell
(Dutton, 423 pages)

Here’s what I thought about the Da Vinci Code: I thought it was deeply absorbing, and poorly written.

I’m not one of those people who summarily snubbed it. As a bookseller, I just loved it to death.  As a connosieur of fine writing, I dismissed it. But as a reader in the mood for a little popular culture, well, Oh Yeah. Great lit it ain’t, but as a good old page-turner, it completely filled the bill. There’ve been DVC wannabees out the wazoo, but for my money, it wasn’t til the publication of Interred With Their Bones that anything came close. Carrell takes the basic story: something world-changing gets lost, bad guys and good guys both want it, blood is shed, someone ends up with it. In this particular incarnation, someone unearths a lost play by the Bard and the chase is on. Interred With Their Bones is a heckuva page-turner and lo: it’s well writ, to boot!