Old-Fashioned Science like his sister Old-Fashioned Religion often got things wrong but they filled the gap until enlightenment found better replacements. The same is not true of Andrea Barrett’s Servents Of The Map: Stories although she does use old-fashioned science as context for her warm, aching stories. The stories have science and characters connecting one to the other, yet they don’t need those connections to stand on their own as novellas.
You will leave each story with a longing for one or more of the characters to find peace, love, happiness, or some sense of completeness. You feel that each character once lived in their forgotten time and place and if you had been there you might have been of some help. And that is what I call a rich reading experience. Charles Marlin
