“Why are we interested?” Taggart said. He smiled at his old teacher. “We’re both just curious about them— there’s a lot of discussion about how they evolved. Why do you think a cave-dwelling species might lose its eyes?”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (MAR 2, 2014)

Phoebe Cornelius, the protagonist of “The Ether of Space,” the second of the five long stories in this collection, makes a living explaining scientific concepts to laymen. This is Andrea Barrett’s forte also. Three of these stories are set in the wings of some great scientific discovery: Phoebe is trying to comprehend Einstein’s Relativity; her son Sam becomes a pioneer in the relatively new science of genetics; and an earlier story explores the impact of Darwinism on the younger generation of scientists in America. In all these cases, Barrett explains the underlying concepts with great clarity. Sometimes, though, the stories seem to be running on two tracks simultaneously, one scientific and the other personal; I don’t know that readers with little interest in science would get much out of the book on the personal level alone.

For some reason, Barrett seems to be drawn to scientists who are deluded or blind, rather than the great innovators. “The Island” is about the summer school set up on Penikese Island (the predecessor of the Woods Hole Institute) by the eminent American scientist Louis Agassiz, a celebrated critic of Darwinism. The grand old man in the background of Phoebe’s story is Sir Oliver Lodge, the great English physicist and radio pioneer who, late in life, made the double error of rejecting Einstein and embracing spiritualism. And Phoebe’s son Sam, although on to something important, invites ridicule by suggesting that some discredited Lamarckian notions might nonetheless coexist with Mendelism.

Barrett’s bookend stories are less tied to scientific theory. In the first, “The Investigators,” a Detroit teenager named Constantine Boyd, spends a summer at a research farm in upstate New York run by his uncle, and watches the early experiments with flying machines taking place in the adjoining valley. In the last, “Archangel,” Boyd reappears as one of the Polar Bear Expedition, that small contingent of American troops sent to Northwest Russia to fight against the Bolsheviks; the true protagonist of that story, however, is a young American woman working with early X-Ray equipment in a military hospital. I liked these two stories especially for their greater emphasis on historical action and human qualities. But despite their concern with scientific theory, the other stories share these qualities too. “The Particles,” the story about Sam Cornelius, begins in high drama with the sinking of the ATHENIA, the first British ship to be torpedoed in WW2. And Phoebe Cornelius, after all her tussles with the mathematics of Relativity, ends with an understanding of relativity in quite a different sense, in the embrace of her extended family, both living and dead.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 22 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition, edition (August 19, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Andrea Barrett
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Air We Breathe

Bibliography:

• Lucid Stars (1988)
• Sweet Harmonies (1989)
• The Middle Kingdom (1991)
• The Forms of Water (1993)
• Ship Fever and Other Stories (1996) 
• The Voyage of Narwhal (1998)
• Servants of the Maps: Stories (2002)
• The Air We Breathe (2007)
• Archangel (August 2013)

With Peter Turchi:

• The Story Behind the Story (January 2004)
• A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on their Craft (March 2011)

“They talked about it afterward, at the end of summer, after the summer folks had left and there was room to breathe again on the island. They talked slowly, hesitantly, in that drawn-out way you hear less and less down east, with long pauses between short utterances, as if, in the end, most things were best left unsaid.

Down at the boatyard where young Floyd was attending to some hitch in the electrics, resuscitating a bilge pump, adjusting a prop shaft that was shaking the engine something awful; down at the town dock where they tied up at the end of a long day, after hosing down their boats, shedding foul-weather jackets, high boots, oilskin overalls, rubber gloves, like lobsters shedding their skins; down at Elliot’s Paralyzo too—the only watering hole on the island—they sipped the froth off their beers and talked of Jim.“

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JAN 31, 2014)

For any reader who revels in confident, lyrical prose – rich in detail with meticulously chosen words – Alice Greenway’s book will enchant.

The storyline focuses on the elderly and irascible ornithologist Jim Kennoway, who, at the end of his career, retreats to a Maine island after his leg is amputated. There, tortured by past memories and fortified by alcohol and solitude, he eschews the company of others. Yet early on, he receives an unwanted visitor: Cadillac, the daughter of Tosca, who teamed with him as a scout to spy on the Japanese army in the Solomon Islands.

In one sense, the theme is how we evolve and own our memories. In the past, Jim examined how the tongues of different bird species evolved to adapt to different flowers of particular islands. Now he finds himself evolving to circumstances beyond his control: the lack of mobility, the inevitable encroachment of memories and of significant others.

As the book travels back and forth in time – to his youth in the early 1900s, to his stint in Naval Intelligence in the Solomon Islands, to his respected career collecting for the Museum of Natural History, the one constant in his life has always been birding. “Birding, he realizes, offered him both a way to engage with the world and a means to escape it.” Indeed, skinning birds reduces them to their very essence.

So it’s no surprise that even as the book opens, Jim has taken upon himself a quixotic task: to evaluate whether Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island was really one of the Solomon Islands. And herein lies another theme: the dastardly pirate Long John Silver, in Treasure Island, remarks how alike he is with the novel’s young hero, Jim Hawkins. Good and evil can exist simultaneously in nature and in life…or can it? Can both co-exist in Jim himself?

The book blurb implies that Tosca’s daughter Cadillac will play an integral role of capturing “his heart and that of everyone she meets.” I believe that sets up false expectations. Cadillac is indeed a catalyst to help Jim arrive at some clarity but for this reader, the center focus of the story is always Jim. It’s an intelligent and beautifully written book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 9 readers
PUBLISHER:	Atlantic Monthly Press (January 7, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alice Greenway
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld Solomon Time by Will Randall

Bibliography:

• White Ghost Girls (2006)
• The Bird Skinner (January 2014)

“I wouldn’t let Laird know it, but I was impressed. Slightly. If nothing else, I was peering down upon a world that, after a generation or so, would forget I ever existed as “The Pointer.” Infinity wasn’t about consciousness evolution; it was about Laird’s ego evolution. And it was also about spreading the human seed beyond our solar system. In a fundamental way it was about escape. And I was all about escape. Except not this time. The price was too high.”

“Anyway,” I said, “have a nice trip.”

“Ellis—”

I did something that only looked brave if you happened to be weak-minded. Still, I was grateful for the cloud engulfing us. Heights tended to make me queasy.

I stepped forward off the scaffolding—

—and stumbled out of the broadcast environment and fetched up against the side of my cabin.

 

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes (APR 2, 2010)

In his debut novel, Harbinger, Jack Skillingstead takes the reader to present day Earth in the midst of an evolutionary change. Ellis Herrick wakes up from a strange dream feeling different. More alive. And so does Nichole, the girl next door. So different, in fact, that she invites him to her room and her bed, even though they were just casual friends, neighbors, and she with a boyfriend. But wait, it’s not a coming of age story. Unless perhaps it’s the population of Earth that is coming of age.

After an auto accident, Ellis’ severed hand grows back. He’s whisked away to a strange hospital where his father signs him over to the care of a rich benefactor. But Langley Ulin is not a benefactor at all. He wants what Ellis has, even if he has to take it piecemeal.

Due to his regenerative abilities, Ellis becomes a source of organs for Langley, who doesn’t want to die. In a moment of weakness, Ellis signs a document that, in essence, makes him the old man’s property. Seemingly forever, since Ellis can’t die. Most people call Ellis “The Herrick,” some with awe, others with contempt.

He loses Nichole and becomes an emotional cripple, unable to have long-term relationships. He also can’t accept the evolutionary change that is happening not just to him, but to many people across the planet. He’s not even sure he believes in these Harbingers, the tree-shaped beings that have been spotted by some since the beginning of the change. Beings who may be responsible for the change. Or may be monitoring Earth’s progress.

About 150 years later, Ellis finds himself on a generational ship traveling to Ulin’s World, captive of Laird Ulin, Langley’s grandson. Ellis tries once more, after a long period of isolation to connect with another human being. He leaves the command level of the ship and takes a holiday in the artificial towns created on the lower levels. Ellis brings chaos to the strict rules of conduct of these self-contained villages that look like crosses between the Hollywood sets of State Fair and Stepford Wives.

Ellis Herrick’s twisted, strange journey is fascinating, as is his struggle with his forced relationship with his captor. He’s both victim of his circumstances and his own psyche. And yet, he’s The Herrick. Like patient zero for a plague, because of his altered state, he heralds the dawn of a new age. He’s not sure he wants to be a part of this evolutionary change, but he can’t escape it, not even through death.

The novel’s ending had me scratching my head, but it also made me think for days about evolution, fate and personal growth. I recommend this remarkable, mind-bending treatment of the evolution of the mind, the transcendence of time and space, immortality and so much more.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Fairwood Press, Inc (September 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jack Skillingstead
EXTRAS:	ExcerptAnn Wilke’s interview with the author
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Are You There? and Other Stories

Bibliography:

• Harbinger (September 2009)
• Are You There and Other Stories (2009)
• Life on the Preservation (2013)