Description
Book SynopsisFinalist for the Story Prize
Longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
A
BookPage and
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A masterful collection of interconnected stories from the "genius enchantress" (Karen Russell) author of
Ship Fever, winner of the National Book Award.
Trade Review"Each story here offers [Barrett's] signature gifts: lyrical distillation of scientific complexity, artful wonder at the natural world, exquisitely observed details, and prose as precise and inevitable as a mathematical proof…With their kaleidoscopic interconnectedness, the overlapping circles of Barrett's stories, from this collection as well as her earlier works, add up to something large and delightful." -- L.A. Taggart - San Francisco Chronicle
"Exhibits a shrewd understanding of the fragility and resilience of the human heart.…Barrett revisits her themes with a scientist’s precision and a poet’s grace." -- Connie Ogle - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[A] confident, quiet, richly imagined collection…Barrett is bold yet deft in handling timelines, lifetimes, and points of view. Each individual story feels complete, even as the connections between them…reinforce the collection’s central conviction that there is no such thing in nature as self-containment; everything is part of something bigger than itself." -- Justin Taylor - New York Times Book Review
"An imaginative miracle woven of complexly connected stories…Immersing oneself in
Natural History is an experience both bracing and magical… [T]he blurring of distinctions, of past and present, reality and fiction, is enhanced by a narrative consciousness that doesn’t hover over the characters so much as live in between them, switching at will from one perspective to the next, allowing us to see the world through Henrietta’s eyes as well as look at her the way others do." -- Christoph Irmscher - Wall Street Journal
"The elegant linked-story collection
Natural History returns the National Book Award-winner to familiar characters—drawn to natural wonders, searching for their own place in science—from her celebrated
Ship Fever." -- Chicago Tribune
"Andrea Barrett’s rewarding short story collection spans the Civil War era to the present day. Women’s roles evolve, as succeeding generations explore science, writing, teaching, and even flying, while still finding room for love and community." -- Christian Science Monitor
"Telling the untold story is the heart of
Natural History…The two stories merge, a kind of palimpsest in which the past is visible through the present and then shaded, artfully, by another hand. The effect is at once familiar and fresh, like being reminded of something half-forgotten and all the more treasured in the recollection, which has been the enduring feeling of all of these stories Andrea Barrett has written, across all these years." -- Holly M. Wendt - Ploughshares
"[A] beautiful new collection." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Barrett depicts the natural world and the human heart with wonder, tenderness, and deep understanding. More superb work from an American master." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Barrett transforms deep knowledge of history, science, and human nature into gorgeously vital and insightful stories in which every element is richly brewed, mulled, and redolent." -- Booklist (starred review)
"You need not have read earlier stories to be informed and dazzled by
Natural History…Barrett demonstrates that while history organizes and distills events, fiction brings messy humanity gloriously to life." -- Bookpage (starred review)
"A finely crafted linked collection…This offers rich rewards." -- Publishers Weekly
