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You are a human animal.

You are a very special book.

For you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello, and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Fibblett, and today my guest is Andrea Barrett.

She's the author most recently of the voyage of the Narwhal, published by Norton, the author previously of a National Book Award-winning collection of stories called Chip Fever, and the novels that preceded that are the Middle Kingdom, the forms of water, secret harmonies, and lucid stars.

Now, the voyage of the Norwalk, there is a voyage of exploration to the Arctic that takes

place in 1853.

55 through 58.

And it's a very interesting book because it takes that period in a sense of American literature,

which would include Poe and Melville, and looks at the underside of the glorious expedition.

In other words, we're looking at a world that is uncontrollable by man

and a world that resists his domination.

And we watch usurpation going on at a level of consciousness and literature

that the classic American novels were incapable of.

What led you to take this up?

It's probably the intersection of exactly those books, which are books I love and admire

and formed me in part as a writer, and then a separate interest in the history of Arctic exploration,

and in particular in that period, the decade in which the book is set,

which is also the decade in

...