The Shell Collector: Stories
The "perilously beautiful" (Boston Globe) first story collection by the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All The Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land.
The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr’s 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—conjuring nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of the characters in these stories contend with hardships; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the ravishing universe outside themselves.
The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr’s 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—conjuring nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of the characters in these stories contend with hardships; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the ravishing universe outside themselves.
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Community Reviews
“This all started when a malarial Seattle-born Buddhist named Nancy was stung by a cone shell in the shell collector’s kitchen.”
The events that unfold after Nancy encountered a deadly cone shell will forever alter the insular world that the shell collector had created for himself and his seeing-eye German Shepard, Tumaini. The setting of this title story of Anthony Doerr’s short story collection is a small marine park in a remote area of the Lamu Archipelago off the coast of Africa. The story follows a blind professor who retired at fifty-eight when he decided that malacology, the mollusk division in the world of invertebrate zoology, only led to more questions.
He spends his days gathering and sorting shells at low tide on this far away island. These daily rituals are, “…what filled his life, what overfilled it.” But the things we love can sometimes carry with them a price. This solitary man will find that the price is higher than just his peace and privacy.
This story is worth the whole of this book, but The Caretaker and Mkondo are also touching tales. A few of the other short stories are hard to appreciate, while some read like they are drafts of stories he will later create. Classic, Doerr, though. Thoughtful and peopled with real folks who lead unusual lives.
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