The Shell Collector: Stories

The Shell Collector: Stories
by Anthony Doerr

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Book Summary Information

Author: Anthony Doerr
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-02-15
ISBN: 0142002968
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Book Reviews of The Shell Collector: Stories

Book Review: Power of the Natural World.
Summary: 5 Stars

Doerr's impressive collection of short stories transports us from the coast of Kenya to the Montana winter, from Liberia in West Africa to Oregon, from Tanzania to Ohio. Three of the best (IMO) are the title story "The Shell Collector", "The Hunter's Wife" and "Mkondo" where the characters Doerr creates exist in natural worlds suffused with a power that is palpable. Add "The Caretaker" and you have four mesmerising stories from a very powerful creative imagination.

In "The Shell Collector", Doerr draws inspiration from the world of science. The blind collector trawls the beaches and coral reefs of Kenya, his retreat from the world, spending his time sifting through the sand granules in search of rare shell specimens, his life long study - but his private world is overturned when he happens on a cure for malaria, strangely enough from the lethal poison of a cone snail. Soon, he is overrun by relatives of the sick and other outsiders when word quickly spreads about the miracle cure..... "The Hunter's Wife" has the gift of psychic commune with the spirits of earth's creatures and this poses a challenge to their life together in the harsh Montana winterscape..... In "Mkondo", Doerr explores the theme of people caught between different cultures: a newly married couple from the rainforests of Tanzania and the suburbs of Oregon respectively, discover how love can first blossom - and then wither, depending on where they are: "She was learning that in her life everything - health, happiness, even love - was subject to the landscape".
"The Caretaker", a refugee from civil war in Liberia, now in Oregon, struggles to recover from the trauma of witnessing atrocities and being forced to carry out an execution.

In contrast, "4th July", recounts the comical misfortunes and escapades of American anglers involved in a fishing contest with Brits..... In "For A Long Time This Was Griselda's Story", two sisters take divergent roads in life, one seeking her fortune assisting a metal eater in a travelling sideshow, the other remaining at home with their mother..... "A Tangle By The Rapid River" is reminiscent of some hunting stories in Annie Proulx's "Heartsong's and other stories", an excellent collection of gritty stories set in rugged country.

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Summary of The Shell Collector: Stories

The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take readers from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties-metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts-and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of his characters contend with tremendous hardship; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the mysteries of the universe outside themselves.

The whorls, chambers, and ribs of the seashell are an elegance unto themselves, but if man-made beauty can come anywhere close to this, Anthony Doerr's short stories would be perfect candidates. His debut collection, The Shell Collector, sets such high standards, sentence to sentence, that it is more like the private architecture of shells than like the random borrowings, sexual details, and flashes of insight that make up the bulk of contemporary fiction. The title story is about a blind man of 58, a scholar of shells (malacology), who retires to an isolated beach-side hut in Kenya, but then accidentally discovers a cure for a major illness in the often-deadly stings of the cone snail. "The Hunter's Wife," a second small masterpiece, describes the marriage of a Montana hunter and his much younger, psychically gifted wife. There are more conventional pieces here; well-written, resonating stories that do not attempt the sweep or descriptive wealth of "The Shell Collector," although they are still at the level of the best realistic fiction that is being published now in America. --Regina Marler

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