First Line: Natural History

The first line of Natural History by Andrea Barrett is

The sea-shore, with its stretches of sandy beach and rocks, seems, at first sight, nothing but a barren waste, merely the natural barrier of the ocean.

Barrett's book is a collection of related stories. Along with Ling Ma's Bliss Montage and Morgan Talty's Night of the Living Rez, Natural History is one of three finalists for the Story Prize.  

On Goodreads, the publisher offers this summary of the collection:

In Natural History, Andrea Barrett completes the beautiful arc of intertwined lives of a family of scientists, teachers, and innovators that she has been weaving through multiple books since her National Book Award–winning collection, Ship Fever. The six exquisite stories in Natural History are set largely in a small community in central New York state and portray some of her most beloved characters, spanning the decades between the Civil War to the present day. In “Henrietta and Her Moths,” a woman tends to an insect nursery as her sister’s life follows a different path. In “Open House,” a young man grapples with a choice between a thrilling life spent discovering fossils and a desire to remain close to home. And in the magnificent title novella, “Natural History,” Barrett deepens the connection between her characters, bringing us through to the present day and providing an unforgettable capstone.

The stories in this book are more introspective and they also have a fair bit of biology and the study and observation of nature. I picked one paragraph from the final story "Natural History," to illustrate how Barrett moves between straight prose and more scientific biology vocabulary.

Four chemists from Bordeaux who shared Dee's interests pounced on her before she reached the front door, and Rosalind, who that summar was as famous as she'd ever be, made her way into the lobby. She greeted a dark haired toxicologist from Mississippi with a gap between his front teeth. A plump Kashmiri peptide chemist with a wonderful laugh. A tiny German woman studying hindered phenols, in her eighties but so energetic she might have been twenty, ruffling her apricot-tinted hair, and beside her a very tall woman with an aspect of a heron. A stranger stood in front of her mailbox: tall, wearing bicycle shorts and a T-shirt, his long blond hair pulled into a ponytail (p. 178).

I enjoyed this book.