Reviewed by Mrs. Foley
From Follett -- Conflict and resentments break out in a small Adirondack town in the fall of 1916 when Miles Fairchild, a wealthy resident living in a "cure cottage" while being treated for tuberculosis, decides to start a discussion group with patients--mostly poor European immigrants--confined in the state-run sanitorium.

This book is one of the finalists for Columbia's One Read. It does cover the historical period in an interesting way (through the stories of the patients and workers at the sanatorium). It probably would not be of interest to most high school students. I found myself not that invested in any of the characters. Although that might have been because I read it quickly. ( )

The Air We Breathe is an historical novel about a group of individuals confined to a tuberculosis hospital in the Adirondacks during World War I. The story isn't really about historical events or the circumstances in which these people find themselves as it is about human conflict both large and small being fed by virtuous and selfish passions. Barrett uses all sorts of clever plot devices and narrative voice to create an almost claustrophobic narrative that weaves together science, history, politics, and social policy. It's a beautiful contemporary novel. Have you ever gone for a walk or been sitting outside, listening to music far off in the distance, music you can only just hear, that sounds really familiar and strangely comforting? That's the feeling I got from this book, i.e., eerily familiar and subtle throughout. ( )

Reviewed by Mrs. Grupe (Social Studies)
This was a great airplane read; not too difficult to read and very easy to become enmeshed in the story and characters. I read it in seven hours and it was a wonderful way to pass the flight time. The setting is an upstate New York small town which has become a haven for the wealthy and not so wealthy who have contracted TB in 1917-1918. There is a complicated love story, a WWI element, a socialist/ capitalist conflict and a thread which details the struggle of three women to rise above the conventions of a stifling society to follow their dreams. I love stories with many layers which are set deeply in a specific historical context and I love stories about topics I don't know much about. This is a book both men and women will enjoy and I would imagine would see much differently. ( )

I like andrea barrett's novels, she has a nice mixture of ideas, science, and a people. she in that regard a lot like richard powers, this novel also had a historical novel feel. the story of america entering ww 1 also studied how we deal with grief. ( )

Uncharacteristically for one of Barrett's book, it was not until three-quarters of the way through the story that I suddenly was drawn in emotionally. Prior to that I was thinking, "the pace is slow - I am not enamored with this book." As a physician, much of the book was fascinating from a clinical and scientific perspective. Barrett's ability to do so is one of the many dimensions of pleasure I experience in her writing, but that wasn't enough to carry the day. In the end, however, its emotional power finally emerged. The ultimate political and social insights evoked a disturbing realization that felt all too real, all too recent, despite the setting of close to 100 years ago. It was at that point my opinion changed. I would not hesitate to recommend this book, though I would give the advice to be patient. It significantly pays off by the last page. ( )

The story of Leo Marburg, Russian-German immigrant, and his stay at the state run curing hospital in the Adirdondacks just before the start of WWI. The residents are concentrated on recovering from tuberculosis and the war takes a back seat to this in the early stages of the novel. Wealthy Miles, who is in a nearby private cure house, initiates weekly sessions where patients can share interesting information regarding life experiences. Leo is attracted to nurses' aide Eudora; Naomi (another aide and Eudora's friend) is attracted to Leo; and Miles is attracted to Naomi. This leads to circumstances that cause a fire at the state facility at Tamarack and destroys lives and relationships. Excellent storytelling as well as history and science. Barrett is terrific! ( )

Barrett is all about setting. This novel, like the others of hers I have read, is about scientists and science, takes place at a tuberculosis sanitarium in the Adirondacks during World War I.

Leo Marburg had studied chemistry in the Ukraine and Russia. He came to New York six years before and has only had menial jobs since. When he got sick, alone, without a family, he was sent to a large state-run sanitarium. The sanitarium starts weekly classes for the edification of the staff and residents taught by them. But a rich older patient from a private cure home falls in love with a young townie. She falls in love with Leo, Leo falls in love with her best friend.

“He felt -- this astonished him --grateful. Not since he was a boy had he had time to think and study and look at the world and himself; and although throughout his stay up here he‘d been sick, sometimes terribly so… at the same time these past months had been astonishing. Food, shelter, books, the forest, our Wednesday gatherings. The world, unclouded. Eudora.” ( )

Isolated and insulated from the world in their cocoons, the TB patients at a state sanitarium tell their story. It is a small and shameful story of xenophobia and misunderstanding among those who by their ostracism from the world and their families should have done better; should have been less placidly herded into their hissing gossipy little groups instead of standing up bravely for a companion.
It is the eve of WWII, the Great War, and American cities rest on an underpinning of immigrant laborers to do the hard and dirty work. Most of these immigrants are from central Europe, Russia and other Slavic regions and from Italy; they are short and swarthy and they do not resemble the Anglo-Saxon or Germanic stock that inhabits the New York town and as such are viewed with suspicion. Later even the Germans, despite their love of the German gifts to culture, such as the three B's or the university system as we know it, are thrust into outsider status by the war. Everyone is an outsider, except for a select few who by birthright are True Americans, and even those with impeccable credentials are on shaky ground should they adopt the wrong attitude. This isolation fuels misunderstanding and cruelty and later pain and death.
The lack of connection hides the rich history behind these patients who live such a regimented life as to stifle any individuality. That this common laborer in a sugar factory should have been an aspiring chemist who read with more than journeyman’s delight the texts that uncover the mysteries of the atomic bond never occurs to anyone except one of the great and wonderful characters in this book, a nearly self taught and horribly disfigured radiologist. Even when we are given a glimpse of the life behind the diseased body of one of the TB patients, it is so glancing and distorted as to not really sink in. A patient has a daughter he cares so much for that he runs away from the sanitarium to see her when she is ill, and yet we know nothing of her, nor of him after he leaves the magic circle, although we know that this was an act that was at best illegal and more likely mortally dangerous.
The silence is broken by a tubercular patient who is in a very different position from the warehoused ones in state custody. He is a man of privilege, also with a past he remembers fondly, but with a present that is so comfortable that he swims in self righteousness, with all the ugly attendant follies of self-righteousness, fussiness, arrogance, selfishness, myopia, insensitivity and lack of imagination, to name a few. He brings the whole world to a head by stirring up this quiet pool of people with a weekly round circle to improve their minds. It gets out of hand, the human mind being a damnable thing once loosed and there is love and longing as a result, and people get hurt, people die even. He and his ilk, in high dudgeon, indulge themselves in the worst sort of xenophobic jingoism in the war effort and to what end? He is wrong about so many things from the prospect of a young girl loving him to the threat of the local choir director to the war movement to the need to remove reading material so that there will not be sedition among the dying.
There is hope here in this gloomy and cold climate. There is a doctor that stands up to the threats and the girl who finds that she is more than she knew. There is a discovery of ability and delight among the patients. This is, though, a completely dead end place, an isolated dead zone. The main characters, the two nearly lovers, who we admire and care about, can only save themselves by escape to another, safer place than these toxic places where people came to recover, except so many died, another hidden story.
Barrett writes so well about human issues and science. I have enjoyed everything of hers that I have read. She does not use an extra word. Things are what they are and then more which is better than too much on the surface. Emotions run high and yet people deal with the life they are given. There is nothing to shock or surprise and yet the story is rich and the telling of it and the setting have a vitality and an immediacy that makes this a wonderful read. ( )

a book chock full of all kinds of information ranging from science to social history and full of pertinent and relevant topics for today. excellent writing and editing. However, it is somewhat dull. It never achieves any level of emtional attachmenet that is dissappointing given the so relevant subject matter. ( )

Written from the perspective of one of the TB patients that were at the sanitorium "getting the cure". Well written, characters were believable and the historical content was well resesarched. I would recommend this for a book club. ( )

I reviewed this book for the November, 2007 edition of the ezine, Open Letters Monthly Arts and Literature Review. http://openlettersmonthly.com/issue/n... ( )

Life in an Adirondack community prized for its clean mountain air and reserved for those suffering from TB was so routine that even the weekly discussion group became an anticipated event for some. Unfortunately, the dreariness of institutional life was depicted a bit too realistically for me. I almost stopped reading when the story became too dry. I did find the ramifications of the love quadrangle to be a welcome diversion from the details of emerging x-ray technology in the early 1900's. I was also intrigued by the historical aspects of the impact WWI had on America as a whole and this small isolated society in particular.

As in her earlier novel, Voyage of the Narwahl, Barrett writes convincingly of the pain of people in isolation and how they respond to adversity. Even though I was not as enamored with The Air We Breathe, I'm glad I continued reading it. As a whole, I found the book interesting but not life-interrupting. ( )

A new novel by Andrea Barrett is indeed a treat, so I was pleased to receive a copy of The Air We Breathe as part of the Early Reviewers program. In short, the book is set in a tuberculosis sanitarium for charity patients in the Adirondacks on the eve of U.S. involvement in World War I. Barrett explores the tragic events that are set in motion when a wealthy patient in private care, Leo Miles, sets up a weekly discussion group for patients.

One of the themes Barrett explores is loss of identity. The patients are cut off from their homes and families, and their lives revolve around a strict treatment regimen broken up by small treats such as movie night. Boredom is relieved by idle gossip and romantic attachments. In addition, most of the patients are immigrants who have lost the identities they had in their country of birth. Regardless of their former profession or status, they are near the bottom of the social ladder in America. Leo Marburg, for instance, despite his scientific training, could only find work in a sugar refinery when he emigrated to New York.

As is typical of Barrett’s books, the theme of science and scientific exploration also plays a key role. Leo begins to regain his self-worth when Irene’s gift of a familiar chemistry textbook seems to give science back to him. The admirable characters are those who use their keen scientific minds: Leo, Eudora, and Irene, who sacrificed her body in pursuit of scientific knowledge about x-rays, much as Marie Curie did for her research on radium. (I could have read a whole book about Irene.) Miles, despite his interest in archaeology, is more a man of business than science. The fact that he owns a cement factory seems to symbolize his rigidity of thought and inability to see the truth.

In our post-9/11 world, Barrett’s descriptions of the fear and suspicions about Germans, or indeed any immigrant who might be German, have unnerving parallels today. As war becomes inevitable, German books are removed from the sanitarium library, a German choir director loses his job, and dachsunds are renamed “liberty pups.” A local group of “patriots” thinks nothing of trampling on people’s civil liberties and informing on their neighbors.

Barrett uses the interesting narrative device of having portions of the book narrated in third-person plural by the other sanitarium residents as a group. In these sections, the sanitarium residents act like a Greek chorus commenting on the action and foreshadowing the tragedy to come with questions like, “How did none of us see it?”

Although this book didn’t knock me over the way Voyage of the Narwhal did, it has a quiet power that stays with you. I highly recommend The Air We Breathe.

Her style is oddly didactic, but what kept me reading was her unusual use of the combined second and third persons ("we," and then shifting to "he" or "she" for individual characters). This was very effective, since the novel was essentially about the tension between individuals and the group, i.e. the collective patients in the sanatorium and the main characters, all of whom went against the norm in one way or another. A very interesting slice of American medical and political life, though it got a bit melodramatic at the end. ( )

The year is 1916; the location, Tamarack Sanatorium in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. The disease that brings patients to this sanatorium, tuberculosis, knows no difference between poverty and wealth. Both are treated there. But those with money stay in private cure cottages in the nearby village where the rest (mostly immigrants) stay in shared rooms much like military barracks.

Patients at Tamarack are virtually cut off from the outside world. After a period of weeks in the infirmary where their movements are strictly prohibited, they are moved to shared rooms in the sanatorium, where their activities are strictly regimented and include rest for hours at a time outside on porches where they can breathe the fresh air. They rest in order to heal or, often as not, wait to die.

This sense of isolation is about to be broken, however, with World War I dragging on in Europe and the United States' impending participation. Open hostility towards Germanic people reaches the sanitorium when an unfortunate accident occurs and one of the patients, an immigrant, is blamed.

Barrett's storytelling is superb. The reader is immediately drawn into active participation as the narrator is a collective (and unnamed) "we". As the story unfolds, bits of information are revealed about "we", so that the reader begins to understand the role of the narrator and his/her own participation in that role. I found this to be particularly effective and added an entire dimension that the story might not have had otherwise.

The story itself was excellent. Barrett incorporates a unique historical perspective, that of science. Her story threads that incorporated the history of radiation including those forms that predated xrays and were used in the diagnosis of tuberculosis were fascinating.

I highly recommend The Air We Breathe. I read it in one sitting; the next day, I bought Barrett's Ship Fever (winner of the National Book Award), whose characters are continued in The Air We Breathe. ( )

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. ( )

A few years ago, I read Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain". I enjoyed the book, but not as fully as I might have -- there were many long passages of philosophical debate which were dull to me as I have never studied philosophy, and I later learned that the characters were allegories of European countries, which was lost on me as I lack in-depth knowledge of European history. Still, the life at the tuberculosis sanatorium and the relationships between the patients were interesting to me. I wished there had been an American equivalent.

When I learned that Andrea Barrett had come out with what, essentially, is such an American equivalent, I was eager to read it. I must say, I have not been disappointed.

Ms. Barrett's book differs from Mann's in that while Mann focuses on a TB sanatorium for the wealthy, "The Air We Breathe" focuses on a TB sanatorium for the poor, while also introducing us to one of the nearby "cure cottages" for wealthy patients. This focus on common people while acknowledging class differences is quite American. "The Air We Breathe" also focuses on America's run-up to and entrance into World War I, which gives me a familiar context, something I lacked for full appreciation of "The Magic Mountain".

The one reservation I had, from early in Ms. Barrett's book, was the point-of-view she utilized. I was disturbed by a plural first-person narrator, speaking in "we" and "our", yet with the omniscient power to see into people's thoughts and hearts. By the end of the book, however, this conflict with the narrative style was resolved to my satisfaction.

Ms. Barrett weaves thorough knowledge of the time period into the story in a way that flows comfortably. I particularly enjoyed learning about this early time in the history of x-ray technology, and the impact it had on its early pioneers. Also of interest was the play between the isolated life of the TB patients vs. the propaganda, the patriotic fever, the curtailing of civil rights,and the fear of anarchy that was taking place outside of (and starting to leak into) the sanatorium. Much of this reaction at the start of WWI is similar to what has taken place in the U.S. over the last few years with the current Iraq war.

The characters in "The Air We Breathe" are well drawn; it was easy for me to become emotionally involved with them. I was pulled into the life at the sanatorium, and wanted to take my time reading this book, savoring it. When I had completed the book, I felt that sadness of having left a world that meant something to me.

If you've been considering reading Ms. Barrett's book, I urge you to pick it up. ( )

A sly observation of the penchant for gossip amongst people forced to spend time together, Andrea Barrett's The Air We Breathe manages to distill the often overlooked time prior to US involvement in World War I and offer it up as a reflection of current American society.

Leo Marburg is a poor immigrant struggling to make a living in New York City when he is diagnosed with tuberculosis and eventually makes his way to Tamarack Lake, a TB cure community in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. There he resides with other destitute TB patients in a sanatorium, ordered to rest and breathe the pure mountain air in order to recover from illness. Also in town are various privately run residences catering to wealthy TB patients, one of whom, industrialist Miles Fairchild, decides to become involved in the lives of the patients at the sanatorium by starting weekly discussion groups. As the patients begin to open up and discuss their pasts and hopes for the future, the patients take over the group and turn it into a learning group, each patient teaching the others the subject in which he specializes.

Meanwhile, battle rages on the fields of Europe as pro- and anti-US involvement fervor sweeps the country, including Tamarack Lake. The town gets swept up in anti-immigrant fervor, which is exploited when a tragedy at the sanatorium leads to the deaths of several patients.

Two teenage girls, best of friends, one of whom works at the sanatorium and one whose mother runs one of the private cure cottages, begin to take different paths into adulthood when ill-fated romantic engagements cross with those seeking to recover from their illness.

Ms. Barrett's prose is clear and precise, with an effect reminiscent of that of John Banville's The Sea - Banville managed to impart a feeling of rolling along the swells of a heaving ocean while Barrett paints a picture of mountain living you will swear you have arrived in the Adirondacks yourself.

The novel incorporates some characters from Ms. Barrett's previous books and possibly that is the reason the denouement seems as if it was wrapped up a little too rushed. However, this does not take away from a pleasurable reading experience. A novel should take the reader to a new place, a new time and introduce her to characters she will want to follow for some time and The Air We Breathe does all of this with remarkable clarity. I look forward to reading the author's previous works. ( )

Set in 1916 as U.S. participation in World War I looked more and more probable, The Air We Breathe offers a glimpse into that world from the unique perspective of the tuberculosis patients who were being treated at Tamarack State, a public hospital located in a small New York town that was well known for the number of private cure cottages also located there. The hospital became home to dozens of indigent immigrants from around the world who had to agree to strict rules regarding their behavior and treatment regimen if they wanted to remain under public care.

New arrivals were instructed to lie quietly in their beds and to move only when told to do so. No talking, laughing, smoking, singing, reading or writing was allowed. They were simply to remain as quiet as possible so that their bodies could focus on ridding them of the disease that brought them to Tamarack State. The patients, many of them from Russia, Germany, and various Eastern European countries were often destitute because they were not allowed to use the skills or educations acquired before their arrival in America. Long-term patients, those whose health improved enough for them to move out of the clinic and into semi-private rooms, soon became bored with the routine and the tiny library available to them. They filled their days with gossip about patients and hospital staff alike, and craved news of the outside world.

Miles Fairchild, a wealthy patient in one of the town’s expensive cure cottages, stepped into this closed community one day with good intentions. He proposed a series of weekly lectures that would allow him and other patients to share their particular areas of expertise with anyone who wanted to attend. Fairchild was gratified by the way his idea caught on but he soon came to resent the fact that he was pushed aside by the group almost as soon as his initial lectures were done. He continued coming to the Wednesday afternoon sessions only because it allowed him some private time with the young woman who drove him to and from the hospital.

As certainty of war approached, xenophobia and an almost paranoid concern about immigrants from countries soon to be at war with the U.S. became the norm even in small town America. When Miles Fairchild, already jealous of the attention his young driver is paying to Leo Marburg, a young Russian patient, decides to use his wealth and influence to question the national loyalties of patients and staff, the social order of Tamarack State begins to break down.

Andrea Barrett, who tells her story through the voices and observations of several anonymous patients, uses Tamarack State as a stand-in for what was going on in the country as a whole on the eve of World War I. The Air We Breathe is filled with sympathetic characters who too often take the easy way out when faced with difficult choices, especially when the inevitable head-to-head clash between Leo and Miles reaches its climax. But these characters fit perfectly into the largely forgotten world of public tuberculosis sanatoriums that Barrett has so remarkably recreated. Theirs is not necessarily a story I was sorry to see end, but their world is definitely one I am happy to have visited.

Rated at: 3.5 ( )

When I first picked up "The Air We Breathe" and began to read, I was in love. The setting of the scene in the first pages had that strange power of really good opening lines; as I read the first words, I felt myself flying down over the setting like a bird, viewing the scene from above just as the author wrote it. I have a penchant for novels that begin this way- starting with the landscape in which the events are set. The effect can be too heavy-handed, sure. But when it is well-done, everything just seems to flow out of the setting completely naturally.

I liked the third person narration, too. I went to a small girl’s school for 13 years, and I recognized the voice as one I sometimes have used. At the time I would have said that everyone was an individual and that, although there were cliques and factions, we didn’t all feel one way together. But when I tell stories about those days, I find myself using a similar “we”. “We all thought that she had done it”. “we used to do this silly thing in the locker room after classes ended”. Was there really a “we”, then? Or is time just amalgamating myself and all the other girls into one being in my mind? Do I just say that because it makes me feel like I belonged to the group (which I seldom felt at the time)? So I can feel the comfort of the voice Barrett uses. And I found it very interesting when individual voices objected to the group narration.

I adored this book for the first 75 pages or so. But after the initial infatuation at the beginning of a good book, I got into the (sometimes hard) work of getting through everything that happens before the climax. The neat narrative voice became commonplace, and I felt like I could see just where everything was going to go. Sure, I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen which each plot line, but I felt like everything was going to come to a fairly predictable crisis, and then people will go on, most of them alone and relatively unhappy, some satisfied with the things that happened. I'd be left cold.

The tone was more lyrical and mysterous in the early part of the book. It really started to drag in the middle section, and I just couldn't make it through! I’m sorry Andrea Barrett! And I’m sorry, LT! Can I review a book I haven’t finished?

Guess I just did. I'll write more if I ever get back in the saddle.

( )

On first glance, this novel could be the American Magic Mountain: it's set in a TB sanatorium in the Adirondacks ("Tamarack Lake," a fictionalized Saranac Lake) during the leadup to the Great War. But Barrett's themes and preoccupations are quite different than Mann's. The Air We Breathe is about collective responsibility, or, more specifically, the failures of collective responsibility.

Leo Marburg, trained as a chemist back in Odessa, has been working menial jobs when he's diagnosed with consumption and sent up from the city to Tamarack Lake. He joins a group of mostly immigrants at the public sanatorium. A wealthy industrialist, taking the cure in a private cottage, sets up a discussion group at thesanatorium to help enlighten the patients, driven there by the disaffected daughter of the owner of the private cottage. The group grows and the patients and staff become entwined with each others' lives, leading to a tragedy paralleling the concurrently spiralling tragedy of the War.

The Air We Breathe gives a good sense of the boringness and sense of being out of time of the invalid experience, and the feel of the late 19thC sanatorium building. The way the disease feels, the worry about the new hollow spots in the lungs, these things were harder to approach. The novel does a good job of depicting the collective experience of medical institutionalization, but not of individual experiences of illness.

The novel is told in first person plural, "we," the voice of all the patients (except Leo and a few others), in a choice explained only as the very end of the novel. By taking voice together, the narrators can, if not expiate, explain their guilt. The discussion in the weekly group of collective societies and utopian communities highlights the characters' preoccupation with how people can or can not take care of each other: one patient finds Oneida, New Harmony, etc, interesting not for the failures of these communities, but for the deathless idealistic impulse to try again. The patients discover all the small and large places where they failed.

I understand the motivations behind the narrative "we," but I found it distancing, getting in the way of my engagement with the characters. The endless foreshadowing gave the novel a sense of inevitability, which is exactly what I think one should avoid in doing history work, and particularly in historical fiction where everyone knows what's going to happen (the US will join the war! there will be anti-immigrant hysteria!). Additionally, not having read any of Barrett's other books, the family tree at the end gave away a plot point for me.

Overall, an interesting meditation on blame and the collective.

Set in a tuberculosis cure community in the Catskills during World War I, The Air We Breathe is Andrea Barrett’s latest meld of science, history, and fiction. Barrett manages to inform her readers not only in the pre-antibiotic attempts at a tuberculosis cure, but also in areas such as the development of X-ray technology, early revelations on the structure of atoms, the initial use of poison gas in warfare and its effects on the human body, and the paranoia and dangerous patriotism in America during the war. Readers of Barrett’s previous works will also have tantalizing glimpses of the lives of characters from Ship Fever, The Voyage of the Narwhal, and Servants of the Map.

Barrett’s usual themes are on display, particularly the effect of scientific advances on society, for good or ill, and the struggle of women to be part of that scientific world. The science and the political situation of the time were exhaustively researched, and Barrett crammed a lot of that research into the story. In the process, she sacrificed on plot and character (flaws that were also evident in The Voyage of the Narwhal).

The plot is basic—a love quadrangle, a clearly telegraphed calamity, and a long denouement—and carried out by mostly one-dimensional characters. It’s all really just there as a place to hang all that fascinating information Barrett uncovered in her research.

Readers interested in science and history will probably forgive Barrett’s character and plot weaknesses. Barrett has a lot of interesting information to impart, and her short fiction has proven that she can produce interesting plot and character in the short form. The Air We Breathe falls short, but Barrett is still a writer to watch. ( )

I was lucky enough to win a copy of Andrea Barrett's The Air We Breathe from Library Thing's Early Reviewer program. This novel takes place in upstate New York in 1916 in a village called Tamarack Lake - a place primarily populated by sufferers of tuberculosis. The wealthy stay in private cute cottages, the less fortunate are wards of the state and thus live in the public sanatorium. There is a war going on across the ocean and the residents of this community wonder and wait to find out if the United States will become involved. Barrett takes her time with this story, introducing us to each character in turn, so that the reader might get to know each one as an individual - how they came to be in this place, and their hopes and dreams. Leo Marberg is the main character in this tale, a young Russian immigrant who speaks multiple languages and was trained as a chemist in the old country; he has not yet fulfilled his dreams in this new world. Eudora and Naomi are girls from the village with differing ideas of how to get what they want from this life. Miles Fairchild is a wealthy owner of a concrete company as well as a patient; he tries to use his time productively. This is the story of how these people and others become entwined in one another's lives, of the love quadrangle that results, and ultimately the disaster that occurs.

I really, really enjoyed reading this book. I thought Andrea Barrett's characterization was brilliant, I felt as thought I knew each person in the story. She uses a unique perspective in telling this story - it is told in the collective "We" and represents the other patients at the sanatorium, the ones not directly involved in the action. I particularly enjoyed learning about early x-ray technology as well as how tuberculosis was treated in these times with no appropriate medications. Overall, I would recommend this book. I understand that there are characters in this book that have also appeared in her other books so this might be of particular interest to those who have read Barrett's other work. ( )

The air we breathe -- a necessity to every living creature--plays a large role in Andrea Barrett's novel of life in the public tuberculosis sanatorium of Tamarack Lake in the early 1900's. It is the fresh, "pure" mountain air of the Adirondacks that brings TB sufferers to that area because the only cure for tuberculosis at that time is bed-rest, eating large meals of healthful food & breathing pure, uncontaminated air.

The story begins with a new arrival at the sanatorium. He is Leo Marburg, a young chemist who has emigrated from central Europe &, unable to find work in his profession, takes a series of menial low-paying jobs. Andrea Barrett draws her characters carefully. Along with Leo, we meet some of the other patients, each unique, each with their own unfortunate history. We are also introduced to 2 young girls who live in the town of Tamarack Lake, Naomi whose mother manages a private "Cure Cottage" for wealthy victims & Eudora who works as a maid. Eudora is interested in finding out how things work & tho lacking in scientific training, is befriended by Irene the radiologist who introduces her to the new science of radiology with its mysterious X-rays that are able to probe beneath the skin & reveal the progression of the disease as it attacks the lungs.

There are many friendships at the sanatorium. Some are brief, others lasting, most with an air of desperation, for the future of the patients is uncertain. They are removed from old friends & family & they are deprived of the activities that
once brightened their lives & gave them meaning. And they are well aware of the disease that threatens every breath they take.

Into this world steps Miles Fairchild, an upper-class, wealthy owner of a cement factory. He, too, suffers from TB, but he receives his treatment at a private "Cure Cottage" run by Naomi's mother. Miles idea is to establish a series of enlightening talks, once a week, to the "uncultured" patients of the state run sanatorium. Naomi, who helps her mother with the cottage, drives Miles back & forth to his weekly meetings. She & her friend Eudora & some of the staff join the patients in what turns out to be a lively & entertaining event. Some of the discusions center on Utopian Communities; Leo's room-mate had belonged to one, but it had failed in its purpose of living entirely from the land when no market could be found for its products. Similar communities are discussed, New Harmony, Shakers, which all failed due to to human weaknesses - love, sex, jealousy, the urge for security being a few.

It is the entrance of the US into The Great War that brings the happy meetings to an end. Miles has joined a secret government project to investigate threats to US security. "There are a million German aliens living here," he tells the group. "Probably half of them spies." And Miles is off, on his own private witch hunt, meeting with law enforcement, government officials & fellow industrialists all eager to seek out & destroy any threat to the security of the homeland. Unfortunately, his TB limits him to the environs of Tamarack Lake.

The coming together of events, historical, personal & romantic leads to the climax of the novel & its denouement. Suspense increases as the main characters, one by one,are overcome by their own emotions & driven to actions whose results are surprising but not unexpected. Andrea Barrett's characters are true to themselves& the story reaches a satisfying conclusion.

I stayed up late to finish this book. It is an intriguing look into a time that is past. We now have drugs to help in the fight against TB, unfortunately, the other struggles still continue with no remedy in sight. ( )

This was my first encounter with Andrea Barrett, having not read her previous titles. The Air We Breathe takes place in a town of sanatoriums and cure cottages in the Adirondacks at the start of World War I. The novel is well-researched and full of fascinating details about life in the sanatorium in particular. I found it amazing that the Cure consisted largely of doing absolutely nothing (including reading). As such, the plot moves along at a quiet pace, as we see members of the community from diverse backgrounds interact with each other, and the consequences of these relationships. The book is well-written, and I enjoyed it. I did, however, find the Greek chorus (as another reviewer noted), collective narrator to be distracting and disrupted the flow of the book, particularly at the beginning, when it was not clear that it was a collective first person narration, rather than an individual. But as historical fiction goes, this is a quality read, that has relevance in today's war-torn world. ( )