Customer Reviews

The Air We Breathe [AIR WE BREATHE]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As precise and perfectly tempered as a scientific experiment, Barrett sets her subtle tour de force in Tamarack Lake in the Adirondacks circa 1916. Dedicated to the cure of tubercular patients, Tamarack State offers a rigid schedule of enforced rest and exposure to the pure mountain air in an effort to clear the diseased lungs of the fortunate few assigned a limited number of beds. While cities are teeming with unrest, a growing immigrant population and their penchant for socialist doctrine, overcrowding, poverty and the demand for unionization of factories, World War I draws ever closer, Germany as yet uncommitted to war with the United States. But the signs grow ominous as the restive days pass for the ill, held captive to their cure, the rules strictly enforced: "no talking... no smoking, no laughing, no singing, no reading, no writing."

Some relief comes from a wealthy patient catered to in Mrs. Martin's cabin, Miles Fairchild, at thirty-seven older than most; Miles establishes a weekly salon to discuss his interest in paleontology. Assuming the acquiescence of the other attendees, Miles' pedantic lectures fail to ignite anyone's imagination save his own. However, the salon allows Martin's daughter, Naomi, an opportunity to earn money driving Miles to and from the event. Fixated on a young woman whose only desire is to escape from this stifling environment, Miles fails to appreciate Naomi's true nature, arrogantly believing she will be grateful for his attentions. She is not, reserving her affections for Leo Marburg, a trained chemist in Russia now reduced to whatever employment he can find in America. Once he steps from center stage, Miles' captive audience yields a bountiful harvest, patients buzzing with curiosity and an opportunity to use dormant intellects so rigidly controlled by the cure.

Certain personalities contribute to the ensuing drama, temporary hostages to fate: Irene, the radiologist who nurtures the inquisitiveness of others; Eudora, an enthusiastic maid, nurse and student of Irene's techniques; Naomi, longing for release while focusing on a man who is not interested; and Dr. Petrie, an unexpected hero who introduces the horrors of the battlefield to the salon. But it is Miles and Leo who form the crux of this novel: Miles, the self-indulgent scion of privilege using his influence to reward and punish; and Leo, intellectually curious as he is materially impoverished, undone by nascent generosity and a penchant for keeping to himself. Into the microcosm of Tamarack State, the ugliness of the war intrudes, the terrible destruction and patriotic paranoia that eviscerates freedom in the name of security.

In Barrett's beautifully rendered novel of despair, hope and hubris, privilege clashes with the realities of immigrant America at the beginning of the 20th century, individuals caught unaware, diseases of the soul far more insidious than those of the body: "We'd contributed to destroying our own world." Luan Gaines/2007.

In 1996, Andrea Barrett's National Book Award-winning story collection SHIP FEVER was published to great critical acclaim. Apparently, book reviewers and readers were not the only ones who found much to treasure in this collection of stories that explore history, science and nature. Barrett herself has returned again and again to the characters and themes she introduced in that collection. From the brilliant novel VOYAGE OF THE NARWHAL to her most recent collection, 2002's SERVANTS OF THE MAP, Barrett has created what amounts to a whole extended family of characters whose passions, desires and ambitions surface and resurface in her fiction.

Now, with her new book THE AIR WE BREATHE, Barrett offers readers another interconnected historical novel (this one is set in 1916) that feels simultaneously historically grounded and accurate in its facts and absolutely contemporary and relevant in its themes. It's set in Tamarack State, a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Adirondack region of northern New York State. A public institution for indigent patients, the hospital (unlike the genteel convalescent homes for wealthy invalids) houses mostly immigrants, recent transplants to the United States from places like Russia, eastern Europe and Germany. Many of these patients, like newly-arrived Leo Marburg, were professionals or highly skilled workers in the old country. Here, though, they are treated as common laborers --- or, eventually, as worse.

Into this milieu comes Miles Fairchild, an industrialist and amateur paleontologist. He's staying down the road at one of the convalescent homes, but he's eager to start a Wednesday afternoon conversation group at Tamarack State. From its origins as a small group of patients listening to Miles's natural history lecures, the group expands, allowing its members not only the opportunity to socialize but also to recapture the lives and knowledge they knew before.

This idyllic environment, however, is doomed to failure. Not only are its members truly ill, but world events are conspiring against it as well. The United States has just entered World War I, and national loyalties are constantly tested. When unrequited love, jealousy and suspicion collide, tragedy cannot be far behind.

Unlike much of Barrett's previous fiction, THE AIR WE BREATHE does not take place on a grand scale or involve groundbreaking discoveries or epic voyages. Instead, it takes place on a small canvas, indeed, set almost entirely within the walls of the sanatorium. In fact, the whole novel, like its setting, is restrained. Barrett still includes her trademark fascination with scientific and sensual passions alike, using both historical fact and stylistic conventions to evoke a particular time and place.

Barrett also plays skillfully with style here, utilizing a first-person plural narrator to represent the collective convalescents who narrate the novel's events. Fluid, quickly shifting perspectives move from this weary "we" to an omniscient third-person point of view that probes into the minds and histories of all its characters. Rewarding both longtime readers who will recognize the mention of familiar names and thoughtful readers who will marvel at her stylistic facility, THE AIR WE BREATHE will leave Barrett's readers reflecting on how her themes of war, suspicion and intolerance still offer contemporary relevance nearly a century after the novel's setting.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

Andrea Barrett lovingly explores the poetic relationship between science and the desires of the human heart. Many of her characters find themselves pondering their lives in places separating them from the rest of society - a ship frozen in the Arctic, an expedition in an exotic place - and in this novel the characters are quarantined in a tuberculosis sanitarium in upstate New York on the eve of the First World War. The story revolves around one patient, Leo Marburg, a recent immigrant, who while at first chaffing under the restrictions imposed by the rules of the institution (like the rigidly enforced rule to relax), finds friendship and love through a weekly discussion group. He also finds a purpose when one of the doctors lends him chemistry books to study so that he may help her with the radiographs she uses to chart patients' progress, setting into motion events that ultimately trigger a tragedy.

Barrett paints a quiet picture of very human characters with all their charms and flaws thrown together by outside forces, coming together, and pulling apart. Readers of some of her previous books (Ship Fever, The Voyage of the Narwhal, Servants of the Map) will recognize familiar names. One of the delights of reading Barrett is how she weaves characters, and even objects, from one story and one time period to another, creating a world of relationships and history. But not having read any of her other works does not at all detract from the enjoyment of this book. In one slim volume, this novel takes on issues of war, friendship, love, betrayal, time, philosophy, gender, class, and guilt, all written in beautifully clear, lyrical prose. Highly recommended.

Set at Tamarack State Hospital for tuberculosis patients in July, 1916, Andrea Barrett's sensitive and moving novel creates an intimate atmosphere in which the patients become a microcosm for the attitudes, social pressures, and political movements of the country at large. Consisting primarily of immigrants who have been isolated from their families, the inhabitants are essentially alone, dealing with their illness on the strength of the values they have brought to the sanatorium.

Among these patients is Leo Marburg, a twenty-six-year-old from Lithuania with a background in science which he has never been able to use in America. Ephraim Kotov, his Russian roommate, a former shopkeeper, has been living in a utopian community of apple growers. Miles Fairchild, a wealthy American industrialist recuperating in a private cottage, has more freedom than the inhabitants of the sanitorium, but he is just as isolated and lonely. It is Miles, seeking intellectual stimulation, who suggests, on a visit to the sanitorium, that the patients meet once a week to share their past lives and interests. Talks on paleontology, evolution, gas warfare in France, the history of utopian communities, the "new"poetry of writers like Carl Sandburg, and the "new" music of Stravinsky and Moussorgsky keep the patients mentally alive, even as they are required to rest, avoid excitement, and recuperate.

The quiet life at Tamarack State is upset by three plot lines, which eventually converge. First, a young relative of Ephraim brings "incendiary" anarchist literature to the hospital and asks Ephraim to hide it for him. Secondly, Miles falls in love with a young caretaker who not only does not return his feelings but who loves Leo. Thirdly, a major fire destroys part of the hospital, the burning X-ray films creating a deadly gas. Leo, connected to all three subplots, comes under suspicion when the American Protective League investigates.

The point of view alternates between the objective third person, telling the basic story of the characters, and a first person plural--a narrative "we"--which develops to tell the story of the collective inner feelings of the inhabitants of the hospital as their lives become more complicated by love, loss, and suspicion. Barrett's sensitivity to the time period, with the growing labor movement, war fever, and medical advances (especially the mysterious X-ray) is also reflected in her attention to characterization as each character asks "Who am I, and how do I make a life that is meaningful?" Though the novel is set in 1916, its themes are universal, and its characters' problems are timeless. Beautifully paced and emotionally moving, this novel adds complexity to the themes which Barrett has developed in previous novels. n Mary Whipple

Ship Fever

Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer (Modern Library Exploration)

Servants of the Map: Stories

Biography - Barrett, Andrea (1954-): An article from: Contemporary Authors

This story of 120 (half men and half women) residents of the fictional Tamarack State Sanatorium for the Treatment of Tuberculosis in the Adirondacks reads a bit like Cancer Ward, although less bleak and philosophical. The Air We Breath contains characters from her previously written and equally good collections of short stories: Ship Fever (my rating four stars), Servants of the Map (my rating four stars), and Voyage of the Narwhal (which I haven't yet read). Its best feature is a family tree, included at the very end, which shows the relationships between characters found in all four books.

Patients of the facility, many of them immigrants, most of them poor, arrive from various locations and eventually come together weekly to socialize and share knowledge in a group setting due to the efforts of a rich, weasel of a guy named Miles, who lives at a more expensive boarding house located nearby. Driven by car by his landlady's daughter, he quickly forms a crush on the teenager who longs for a different life outside the small town. The story is narrated by a resident whose identity is never revealed and recounts events as they believe them to be true regarding a situation involving Leo Marburg (who arrives at in July of 1916). As a result of Marburg's actions, performed in loyalty to a resident with whom he forms a friendship, and a series of related and sometimes unfortunate events, the dynamics of the relationships between residents of the facility change greatly. The story is set against a backdrop of WWI, which the U.S. becomes involved in during the time covered in the novel. The book seems a bit slow at the start as the author introduces the primary characters, but picks up speed and intrigue as the situation with Leo Marburg comes to a head. Besides Leo, Miles and Naomi, there are several other notable characters including: a skilled radiologist, Irene; a talented, diminutive doctor, Dr. Petrie; and a ward worker, Eudora. The author weaves a wonderful story about the descendants of notable characters from three of her other books very cleverly. Fans of The Air We Breathe might consider the using the following plan: read The Air We Breathe first and keep a copy of the family tree, read Servants of the Map second (all the main characters are shown on the family tree), read Ship Fever third (which has info on the Kynd family and a few others), read Voyage of the Narwhal fourth (which contains a continuation about the lives of Ned and Denis Kynd after Ship Fever). My favorite is definitely Servants of the Map, and having read it before and after The Air We Breathe, is more enjoyable when read after and with a copy of the family tree to keep track of the characters. Also good: Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith and Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.

I was so excited to begin reading this book. I was equally excited to finish it. It began nowhere, and it ended nowhere with many pages in between. I love the Adirondacks. I love reading about history. I love a good novel. Unfortunately this book did nothing to help me enjoy any of the above. I didn't care about any of the characters. The story was so loosely woven that I had to struggle to pick up the book to finish it.

It is as though the author was trying desperately to write using a new literary device and she didn't care if the book "worked" or not. I felt like I was back in school and I was being forced to read a bad piece of poetry. I wanted so much to like it.

Refreshing to step out of the modern world and into a sanitorium for indigent TB patients in upstate New York at the start of World War I. Forced into inactivity by the prevailing wisdom on TB treatments --keep 'em 1) flat on their backs to promote blood flow to the infected lungs, 2) calm, and 3) outdoors as much as possible-- this diverse group of immigrants turns to the world of their minds to pass the long hours. No surprise that their human relationships are equally diverting and ultimately destructive to the residents and staff.

The story, unfortunately, becomes tedious and confusing at times. I kept hoping that the narrator --a female patient perhaps?-- would soon step out of the background and bring the plot back to clarity and interest. Alas, this never happened, and once again I was left wondering why I don't just borrow books from the library instead of buying them.

I've always been curious about the TB sanatorium of the early 20th century. The legality of government enforced quarantine and the effectiveness of the treatment on the individual and the rest of the country all came to my mind when the Aids epidemic first hit in the 1980's. Barrett gives us all a wonderfully realized look inside such a place. The scientific detail was fascinating and the characters were, for the most part, admirable and very sympathetic, in spite of their human failings in the end.

The book is written in the collective "we" representing the entire community. The reader observes the action as one of the group without being one of the main characters. This unusual point of view is reason alone to read this original novel. Altogether a "don't miss this" book.

Andrea Barrett is a new writer for me, but not for thousands of others. Her book, Ship Fever, won the National Book Award. She has a wonderful ability to combine fascinating scientific facts with an intriguing story line.

The Air We Breathe takes place in 1916, just before our entry into WWI. The protagonist, Leo Marburg, is a guest of the state of New York in a tuberculosis sanatorium on the hill overlooking the village of Tamarack Lake. We are reminded that the cure for TB at that time was rest and fresh, brisk air and that X-rays were new medical miracles.

The area is one where the wealthy guest lived in private "cure cottages," and the poor, many of the recent immigrants, in the sanatorium. In an effort to enlighten the ignorant poor, one of the wealthy guests begins a weekly discussion group which ultimately draws not only patients, but staff and doctors as well.

As the country moves inexorably towards war, there is a general paranoia about foreign spies and trade unions. Those who are ill, staff, especially two young and bright women, and doctors weave entangled relationships built on fact and fantasy. Within the tale, we learn of the development of radiology, including dangers unknown at the inception of the science.

Barrett is a fine writer who creates sympathetic characters and draws us into their lives and their times. I will look for more of her skillful and enticing work

by Judith Helburn

for Story Circle Book Reviews

reviewing books by, for, and about women

The Air We Breathe is a powerful historical novel with a modern and disturbing resonance .

Set during the later years of World War I, in the Adirondacks, The Air We Breathe is on the surface a fairly simple story about a closed community. Most of the action takes place at Tamarack State Sanatorium for those recovering from, or in some cases, dying from tuberculosis. Unlike the private cure homes that cater to the well to do seeking a cure, Tamarack State Sanatorium is a government funded agency for the poor, many of whom are recent immigrants to the United States.

The story centers around the relationships between Leo Marburg, an intellectually curious immigrant from Lithuania, who although well educated in his own country has been unable to find suitable work in America ; Eudora, a nurse whom he greatly admires; Naomi, a restless young woman from the village who has her eye on Leo; and Miles, a well-to-do factory owner recovering from tuberculosis in a private cure home, who becomes obsessed with Naomi.

When Miles, in a burst of energy, visits the sanatorium and proposes a Wednesday discussion group, the project soon becomes a favorite and very rewarding gathering for the patients. But Miles's obsession with Naomi and her equal obsession with Leo set into motion a chain of events that bring havoc and death to the closed community. More subtly, the residents themselves react in ways that bring them little honor or self respect as they turn against their own in a time of tragedy.

In 1916, although America had not entered the European War due to strong isolationist feeling, there was a growing sense of uneasiness about Germans living in the United States. Fear mongers fed upon the uneasiness of the public, raising suspicions not just about new German immigrants but about German American citizens who had lived in the country for generations. Suspicions about communist infiltrators to the United States, union organizers, and anyone not fitting a certain bland, homogeneous "patriotic" stereotype led neighbors to look askance at each other and gave government and quazi-government groups growing power to investigate, question, and arrest potential "enemies" to the United States.

What I find most intriguing about this novel is how topics that are part of the national scene now, including issues of public health and immigration, are shown to have been just as prevalent and divisive in the earlier part of the 20th century.