SOURCE: “Winters of Discontent,” in Women's Review of Books, Vol. 16, No. 3, December, 1998, p. 8.

In the following review, Anshaw commends Barrett's scrupulous research and use of detail in The Voyage of the Narwhal.

At first blush, The Voyage of the Narwhal might seem an odd book for consideration in The Women's Review, concerning itself as it does mainly with men—moreover, men in acutely manly postures, engaged in the rugged heroics and privations of Arctic exploration. But Andrea Barrett is up to quite a bit more than an adventure saga. Like an iceberg, the bulk of her story lies in the vast dark stillness beneath its surface. Ultimately, the novel emerges into a tale of the vainglorious beginnings of the modern, the Western, the scientific—traditions we now so comfortably inhabit that we seldom give thought to what might have gotten pushed aside in the process of obtaining this...