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.

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

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 11 reviews)

Barrett at her best: natural science themed short stories

If you plan to read only one book by Andrea Barrett, let it be this one. Most of the main characters in these stories are related by blood or marriage to those in some of her other works: The Air We Breathe "TAWB" (read it first if you think you might have time for more), Ship Fever, and Voyage of the Narwhal. The first story, Servants of the Map, is about a Civil Junior Sub Assistant in the Himalayan Service during the early 1860s, and is told primarily in the form of letters from Max Vigne, born in 1835, to his wife, with whom he shares his experiences in the Himalayas: surveying, mapping, collecting and writing about the local fauna, and dealing with some pretty colorful fellow HS workers. Some of his descendants show up in TAWB as well as in the last story of this collection, The Cure, about the life of homeopath Nora Kynd, born in 1825 (who appears in Ship Fever and TAWB), another Kynd family member, and Max Vigne's wife and children.

Both The Forest and The Mysteries of Ubiquitin are about the Marburg sisters, born in the mid-1950s, whose father, Leo, is a major character in TAWB. The setting of The Forest is a party, during which the younger, less successful sister prodigy finds herself stuck with an elderly, visiting professor. He suffers a mishap when, on a whim, she takes him on a little adventure. In The Mysteries of Ubiquitin, she appears again, this time as a successful, thirty-year-old biochemist en route to an enzymology meeting who encounters the man who, years earlier during her childhood and his young adulthood, was her first crush. A relationship ensues during which she learns more than she wanted to about certain relatives.

Theories of Rain and Two Rivers are also related. The first concerns a girl, Lavinia, born in 1790, who spends a lot of time thinking about her long lost brother, who she has not seen since she was a child. The siblings become separated when she is spirited away by two "aunts" after disease decimates her family, orphaning the two. She is infatuated by a neighbor, but is courted by another. Two Rivers follows her brother, Caleb, born in 1788, who is taken in by a theology teacher with an interest in paleontology. He becomes a schoolteacher, and meets an intriguing young woman on a solitary paleontology expedition.

Summary: Barretts' phenomenally written short stories will leave you wanting more, which, fortunately, there is. The family tree at the back of TAWB entitled "The Families" is indispensable in keeping track of the characters in this and the other books. These stories deserve at least four stars as a stand-alone book, five stars in combination with The Air We Breathe and Ship Fever.

January 17, 2008

Lovely!

I had read the description and thought it sounded interesting; upon reading it I am transported into a wonderful place of serene adoration of this book. I love to dabble in naturalism and I love the depiction of the mysteries which modern science has now cleared up, but were once romantic, magical questions (such as where meteors come from). I love the characters and I mourn when the stories end. It's a quick, delightful read that will lead me to more Angela Barrett books for certain.
January 04, 2008

Very sick

I enjoyed the "Narwhal". That led me to believe I might have a good book here. I began reading and found a very sick image of male sexuality. I am certainly no prude but men, among their own, behave far differently than Ms. Barrett imagines. What she writes suggests a great deal about her own thoughts.

I am sorry to see a competent writer resort to such devices. It is truly sad. I suspect she has fallen on hard times and is trying to make images of something she doesn't understand at all. The story rings with falsehood from that point on.

Good reader that I am; I read the entire work and must say that I believe Ms Barrett is short of material and not creative enough to be convincing.I did have the opportunity to review this for a newspaper but it was not worth a review.

The author should look at plot again. Tricks are apparent and really beneath her. I hope she does better in the future. She has the basic ability. Perhaps this book was an aberration. I hope so. I would like to see more of what I know she can do.
July 27, 2006

Erudite, poetic, deeply enriching stories

SERVANTS OF THE MAP is a unique collection of short stories by the redoubtable Andrea Barrett. While most of us felt she needed the space and stretched-canvas-epic-form to weave her magic, in this collection of six shortish stories she proves she is as adept at relating her tales woven equally with Apollonian/scientific and Dionysian/sensual facets in tight, capsular fashion. She still manages to create vistas rather than views and lineages rather than one dimensional lifetimes. Now and then I find it necessary to break out of her luxuriously poetic language and take a laudatory appraisal of this women's depth of scientific information. The research for such diverse stories pays off by giving the reader the pleasure of discovery of cartography, botany, medical diseases etc in a flowing, painless entry to the richly detailed minds of her characters. This is nothing short of a wondrous book, on to be revisited often - one story at a time - like a treasured scrapbook travelogue!
June 25, 2003

Wonderful storytelling, but...........

No doubt, these finely crafted, interwoven stories will delight many readers, but.... If you're considering this collection because you loved the adventure and danger of Voyage of the Narwhal, reconsider. These stories are as quiet and subtle as Voyage is exciting.
May 08, 2003

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Ship Fever
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The Air We Breathe: A Novel
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Voyage of the Narwhal: A Novel
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