Product Description

Ranging across two centuries, and from the western Himalaya to an Adirondack village, these wonderfully imagined stories and novellas travel the territories of yearning and awakening, of loss and unexpected discovery. A mapper of the highest mountain peaks realizes his true obsession. A young woman afire with scientific curiosity must come to terms with a romantic fantasy. Brothers and sisters, torn apart at an early age, are beset by dreams of reunion. Throughout, Barrett's most characteristic theme—the happenings in that borderland between science and desire—unfolds in the diverse lives of unforgettable human beings.

Although each richly layered tale stands independently, readers of Ship Fever (National Book Award winner) and Barrett's extraordinary novel The Voyage of the Narwhal, will discover subtle links both among these new stories and to characters in the earlier works.

The title story of this volume was selected for Best American Short Stories 2001 and for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 2001.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #297605 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.com Review
No one limns the opposing pull of inner and outer worlds more eloquently than Andrea Barrett. Her naturalists, explorers, scientists, and healers are driven to work and above all to know; they categorize, theorize, and collect the phenomena of the natural world with an urgency that feels like physical need. But they are motivated equally by desire and loneliness, and the theme of domestic life runs like a countermelody through each of the six lovely, deeply memorable stories in Servants of the Map. The narrator of the title story, a cartographer in the Grand Trigonometrical Survey of India, is a timid, home- and family-loving man, but the Himalayas strike him with the force of a revelation. The heroine of the lyrical "Theories of Rain" is a creature of strong feelings and appetites, driven to ask questions about the world around her in the same spirit as she longs for a neighbor and mourns the brother separated from her in childhood. Her scientific curiosity is scarcely different from her desire: "Through that channel of longing, the world enters me."

Fans of Barrett's earlier books (the sublime Ship Fever and Voyage of the Narwhal) will delight in tracing the stories and characters that wind in and out of these three books, producing the sense of something lovely, ongoing, and whole. In the final story, Elizabeth finds consolation in her work caring for tubercular patients--"as if, in the order and precarious harmony of this house and those it shelters she might, for all that gets lost in this life, at last have found a cure." The same might be said of science, and of Barrett's art. --Mary Park

From Publishers Weekly
Travelers, naturalists, nurses, botanists, surveyors a multitude of seekers and healers populate this luminous new collection of two novellas and four stories by National Book Award-winner Barrett (Ship Fever; The Voyage of the Narwhal). Tracking her wandering protagonists from the banks of the Schuylkill in Pennsylvania in 1810 to the Himalayas in the 1860s and on to New York's Finger Lakes in the late 20th century, Barrett elegantly portrays the transitory nature of life and love. Selected for Best American Short Stories (2001) and The O. Henry Awards (2001), the title novella follows young British surveyor Max Vigne on a long, arduous mapping expedition as he writes letters home to a cherished wife that become a chronicle of the distance that is growing between them. Partings and reunions of loved ones recur in these stories. In "Theories of Rain," a young orphan studying the mysteries of precipitation and passion yearns for the brother she was separated from as a child; in the novella "The Cure," a nurse at a village in the Adirondacks finds the brother she lost years ago and yet struggles to communicate with him. In the contemporary "The Forest," Barrett creates a lovely comedy of the inevitable gap of perspectives between an illustrious Polish scientist who has grown nostalgic with age and a young woman who yearns to break free of the past. The mark of Barrett's artistry is her ability to illuminate loneliness and isolation, but also to capture the improbably forged bonds between her disparate characters. 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. Author tour. (Feb. 1) Forecast: An elegant sepia-toned jacket and Barrett's rapidly growing reputation as one of the finest writers at work today will assure a substantial audience for this radiant collection.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
All six of the intricate and closely related tales in Barrett's latest collection depict intriguing moments of tension between scientific endeavor and human nature, dating from the early 19th century to the present. In the mesmerizing title story (selected for both Best American Short Stories 2001 and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 2001), young Max Vigne seeks the adventure of a lifetime as part of an 1863 expedition to map the Himalayas but instead finds personal anguish and unexpected self-knowledge. "The Cure," set in 1905, finds Max's daughter Elizabeth reflecting on the strange paths that led her to becoming a healer in the Adirondack wilderness. "The Mysteries of Ubiquitin" portrays an up-and-coming female biochemist distracted by a chance to live out her childhood dream of romance. This book more than matches Barrett's earlier story collection, Ship Fever, which won the National Book Award. Highly recommended for most fiction collections.
- Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A Work of Astonishing Fiction
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.

Wonderous
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.

Mapping the contours of the heart
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.