The Air We Breath (2007) by Andrea Barrett

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

The Air We Breath (2007)

by Andrea Barrett

Saranac Lake, New York

New York: 12/105

Upstate New York: 11/23

  It is February and I'm halfway through greater Upstate New York, which I have extended down to New Rochelle- sorry purists!  The Air We Breath is one of the more tolerable titles I've read from this part of the country.  It's a low-stakes work of historical literary fiction set at a Tuberculosis sanitarium in far North New York, set during World War I.   Barrett uses an unnamed third person narrator who generally sounds like another resident of the asylum who also knows everything, everywhere- that's what they call technique, kids.   

 I'd never heard of Barrett before this book but I quickly learned that she won a National Book Award for a collection of short stories and novellas that mostly revolve around scientific themes, as is the case there.  As I've said before and I'll say again, anything that takes me aware from middle aged white Dads and Moms having troubled marriages in NYC is gold for me, so this is one of those books that I'm just happy to read.   It wasn't great- there is some action towards the end but generally speaking tuberculosis patients are a sedate bunch (they have to sit still so the pockets of germs in side their lungs scab over and can't be released). Certainly there are some interesting/memorable moments, particularly those that relate to the lady who operates the early X Ray machine in the basement (before they knew what prolonged exposure to radiation did to you, early technicians just suffered and died) but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it to anyone. 

Fetishists of sanitarium culture, perhaps.