The Shell Collector - Doerr - 4 stars

[Jgrace]

The Shell Collector - Doerr
4 stars

There are eight stories in this collection, first published in 2001, thirteen years before All the Light We Cannot See. It was interesting to find the elements in these early stories that resurface in the longer novel. The title story is about a blind malacologist (a shell collector with a seeing eye dog). Mkondo deals with a museum curator who finds an unusual wife while fossil hunting in Tanzania. And, The Caretaker looks at the ugliness of the Liberian civil war, the post traumatic stress and refugee flight of one of its victims.

I could see some similarities to Doerr’s later work, but these stories stand on their own merits.There’s a mesmerizing strangeness to most of them. Doerr’s descriptions are lyrical and his characters are vibrant. A few of the stories have characters with some kind of paranormal ability; The Hunter’s Wife sees visions when she touches dying animals. Griselda Drown is married to a carnival metal eater. The Shell Collector becomes the reluctant supplier of a poisonous sea snail that miraculously cures the dying. All of the stories have characters who are dealing with some kind of displacement or estrangement.

Although I did not dislike any of these stories, I could tell that they were the author’s earlier work. Each story from his later collection, Memory Wall, stands out distinctly in my own memory. I’m already finding that several of the stories in this group are melding together in my thoughts and becoming foggy in my memory. It’s good to know that his writing is only getting better with time.

[Amy]

Wow- what a find! We're into "over-booked" for the next 13 days, I'd jump on this!

[[deleted user]]

So glad you enjoyed this and I have noticed other GR friends gave it a high rating. This is on my tbr and I do plan to read it next year.