Ms. Hen reviews Ship Fever

Ship Fever

Andrea Barrett

W. W. Norton

1996

Ms. Hen decided to read this collection of short stories because she found it at the Little Free Library in Boston, and she picked it up because she liked the cover. She didn’t realize at the time she found it that she had read another book by this author years ago, THE FORMS OF WATER, which she remembers enjoying.

These short stories are all connected, but they do not contain the same characters and information. All these stories are about history and science, with a little bit of sexiness thrown in to make it interesting. Ms. Hen likes history, but she does not really understand science, even though she admires it, and knows to some people it’s fascinating, and that’s how they spend their spare time. A lot of the characters in these stories are scientists or pursue science.

One of the stories that made Ms. Hen think was, “Rare Bird.” This takes place in the 18^th century, and it’s about a woman who is interested in the behavior of swallows in England. People she knows believe that the swallows can be brought back to life when they appear to be dead. Ms. Hen thinks this story is fascinating because it is not only about science but it’s also about how women were treated in that era. Women weren’t supposed to be passionate about anything except for frivolity, and this character and her friend were outcasts because they wanted to perform science experiments. It made Ms. Hen think that a lot of the world has not changed, and some women still only care for superficial, primal things, and not the pursuit of higher learning.  Ms. Hen is not a hen who would do science experiments for fun, but she is a hen who admires women who do what they want and pursue intellectual stimulation.

The title story, “Ship Fever,” is the longest story in the collection, and Ms. Hen thinks it is the best and most thought provoking. This story is about a young doctor, Laughlin Grant, in Quebec City in the 19^th century during the Irish potato famine. He does not treat a lot of patients in the city; he studied in Paris, and as a result, his methods are more advanced than the New World doctors of that time. He doesn’t believe in bloodletting, and that is a practice that is accepted in that area. His childhood friend, Susannah, has a husband who is a journalist, and he writes about the emigrants traveling from Ireland on ships that are diseased with typhoid. Laughlin goes to Grosse Isle where the emigrants are being treated. Sickness and death are everywhere. Ms. Hen had never read about this before, and it is based on historical fact.

Ms. Hen thinks this story mirrors what is happening today with the migrants coming from the south of the border from the United States. People were treated horribly in the 19^th century who were from Ireland; Canadians and Americans didn’t want them; they thought they were lazy and dirty and useless, much like how the migrants from Central and South America are now are perceived. Ms. Hen knew about this history, but she had never read anything similar to this before. These were her people, even though her ancestors did not come over from the potato famine; they came to the United States shortly after that. It’s been almost two hundred years since then, but the general public seems to have forgotten who the people were that nobody wanted here in the past, who were considered animals and disgusting. People are people and everyone just wants to live a decent life.

This book surprised Ms. Hen. It wasn’t quite like what she usually reads. She doesn’t read a lot about characters who are interested in science, but she enjoyed these stories. There’s more to the world than the sphere in which we live.