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.Â