by
Andrea Barrett
(W. W. Norton, Feb. 25, 2025, hc $25.10, 208 pp.)
Reviewed by Robert E Waters
In Andrea Barrett’s Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction, she explores historical fiction and draws upon various authors—Toni Morrison, Leo Tolstoy, Hilary Mantel, Colm Tobin, Virginia Woolf—and various other authors and scientists who explore the “mysteries and delights of the genre.” She has written several historical novels, including Archangel, The Air We Breathe, The Voyage of the Narwal, along with many other historical fiction novels. She has also been a recipient of The National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Servants of the Map.
In Chapter 1, The Floating Pants, Barrett discusses various botanists, zoologists, surveyors, map-makers, oceanographers, and many other men/women of science who explore fact and fiction. In one section of the chapter, she discusses the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of 1872. She then segues into her novel, The Voyage of the Narwhal, where she states that a “handful of American naturalists [were] exploring the arctic during the mid-1850s.” What’s most compelling about her work on The Voyage of the Narwhal is that she is a little self-deprecating about her novel: “It starts in the wrong voice (first person, not third); it begins at the wrong time (in1830s, with a clumsy story set 1861, rather than in the 1850s.” I find her self-deprecation quite interesting and thought-provoking.
In Chapter 2, The Sea of Information, she starts off with a discussion about Tuberculosis and the tragedy of that sickness. In a 1915 handbook about the disease, it states that “tuberculosis is largely a disease of the poor.” She castigates that notion, stating that it was “officious, pushy, and condescending.” She then had an urge to write a novel, and this was a time when she lived in New York, experiencing the tragedy of 9/11. She then delves into World War I, researching the war and establishing her novel, wanting to “help a reader feel what my characters were feeling.” “A good novel or story or poem,” she states, “tries to convey a different kind of knowledge… we write in response to that world; we write in response to what we read and learn.”
Chapter 3, The Years and the Years, was my favorite chapter, for she discusses the work of Virginia Woolf, whose novel, The Years, Barrett found compelling. In it, Barrett states that it’s a novel that “opens in 1880, ends in the ‘present day,’ and follows the entwined lives of an extended family over decades of enormous historical change.” So inspired by Woolf, Barrett then began writing her first published novel, Lucid Stars, where she stated that “having written four contemporary novels… I began writing fiction set entirely in the past.” She read a lot of historical novels, in addition to researching many more. Later in the chapter, she states that “Woolf’s characters live in history: they experience and think about politics, respond to social change.” Barrett later states that “looking back through the scrim of Woolf’s work, I can make retroactive sense of my long, confused, usually inarticulate attempts to write a certain kind of fiction set in the past.” And that’s exactly what Barrett, and Woolf, do.
In the remaining chapters (chapters 4-7), Barrett explores the work of various authors and scientists: Physicist Oliver Lodge, Swedish botanist Daniel Solander, a nurse’s aide named Eudora, a young medic Constantine Boyd, Zoologist Alpheus Spring Packard Jr., and Toni Morrison. In addition, she also offers some interesting insights into her thoughts on her work:
“Fiction cannot, by definition, be completely factual or historically accurate. “True fiction” is a contradiction in terms.”
“Fiction is driven by the characters’ emotions—not by my forced adherence to predetermined events.”
“A fiction writer has to write about something; has to have some set of characters, engaged in some activities, in some time and place in some world.”
“Fictional lives were as real to me as—more real than—my own.”
“That—not only that, but essentially that; in addition to fact, sometimes instead of fact—is at the heart of fiction.”
Did I enjoy Dust and Light? Yes, absolutely. There were, on occasion, passages by Barrett that felt a little confusing, almost stream-of-consciousness-like, that kind of threw me off the narration. Nevertheless, Dust and Light is an excellent journey into the heart and mind of Andrea Barrett’s stunning work of historical fiction.
Highly recommended.
Robert E Waters’ writing career began with “The Assassin’s Retirement Party,” published in 2003, Weird Tales, Issue 332. He has written several short stories in the Ring of Fire series, including two novels: 1636: Calabar’s War (with Charles E Gannon) and 1637: The Transylvanian Decision (with Eric Flint).
In addition, he’s written several other science fiction and fantasy stories and novels, including the media tie-in novel The Last Hurrah set in Mantic Games’ Dreadball/Warpath Universe. He now has over seventy stories and nine novels in print.