The Shell Collector: Stories

I haven’t read short stories since college and really enjoyed these. They were all so different but I was immediately sucked into each uniquely created ecosystem and it’s characters and story. Beautifully written with lots of stories rooted in nature which I always enjoy.

"She was learning that in her life everything--health, happiness, even love--was subject to the landscape; the weathers of the world were inseparable from the weathers of her soul" is what Zambian-born Naima discovers. And this could well summarize the theme of most if not all of the stories in this very unusual collection of short stories by Anthony Doerr. I had not read anything of his before--had not heard of him--but after reading these stories, I immediately ordered another collection of his.Many authors write in what I call a single style. We know exactly what we will get when we open a collection of, for example, Annie Proulx stories. But Doerr's are not that way at all. My favorite, because I love to laugh when I read, is "July Fourth," one of the shorter of these stories which are mostly long short stories. This is a story that is one of those read-alouders. It all started in Manhattan in the "uptight anglers' club" where "picking at platters of tempura and sipping vodka martinis" the American fishermen--if they really could honestly be called that--have challenged the Brits who belong to their own anglers' club to a contest to see which can catch the largest fish from each of the continents. We don't see much of the Brits, only the buffoons from America as they travel in style to various places in Europe, ending up in Lithuania, thinking it is Poland. This story came as a big surprise because the other stories are just not humorous, are much more serious.Several of the stories take place in various parts of Africa including the opening on, "The Shell Collector" who lives on an island off the coast of Kenya. He is a retired, blind college professor who never is given a name. In fact there are several stories in this collection in which central characters are not named including the second one, "The Hunter's Wife" in which the central character, the Montana-born hunter marries a woman much younger than him under some rather unusual circumstances. And the story opens as he is about to leave Montana for the first time in his life--he is in his fifties--and is flying to Chicago where he will see his wife after an absence of twenty years.Because I have spent time in and around the various places in Maine where Mexican-born 14-year-old Dorothea San Juan has moved with her parents--her father claims he has a job building ships at the Bath Iron Works--I was immediately attracted to this story with its references to Popham Beach, Harpswell, isolated and charming little places outside Brunswich, Maine. And later I learn that the author is an alumnus of Bowdoin College! But this is actually one of the stories I would put as least favorite among the stories although I liked it well enough.One of the strangest stories I have ever read it "For a Long Time This Was Griselda's Story." Griselda runs away with a magician, leaving behind her younger sister and widowed mother who never accepts that her elder daughter left. My favorite stories, however, come near the end, the longer "The Caretaker" and the shortest in this collection, "A Tangle by the River." (The author quite clearly knows a lot about fishing and really uses that knowledge so well in these stories.) But the central character in "The Caretaker" is just so beautiful, born in Liberia and forced to leave, ending up in Oregon where he becomes a caretaker of an estate--or sort of a caretaker. In this story you will want to follow the metaphors, the unburied mother and then the burying of the hearts of the beached whales and what what happens one day regarding the daughter of the couple for whom he is (or was) the caretaker. He truly becomes the caretaker of so much.I highly recommend this collection of stories.

Man and nature. Writers have struggled to make sense of this tortured relationship since the beginning of literature. Lesser authors might shy away from attempts to tread the same hallowed ground explored by titans like Hemingway, Steinbeck or Faulkner. But Anthony Doerr, in "The Shell Collector," succeeds on his own quiet and gentle merits in portraying the pathos of human beings separated from their natural selves by the forces of civilization.By and large each story here is a gem, revolving around a central, singular, simple character with a magical nature. In the title story, a blind recluse in the south seas becomes an unlikely and reluctant healing guru by way of a heretofore venemous shellfish. Doerr renders the man's heartache with graceful, stunning empathy as his life careens away from him, and then circles around and back, a necessary cycle of pain and redemption.The rest of the book opens up the themes introduced with such loving artistry in the first story. "The Hunter's Wife" and "Mkondo" both weave tales about women separated by marriage from their true selves like Persephone from Demeter, living with men whose love they accept, but live to regret. In "Mkondo", the bride, removed from her home in sub-Sarahan Africa, laments of her new environment: "Nothing grew, nothing lived; even the light seemed dead, falling from naked bulbs screwed into the ceiling." From her musings Doerr evokes the vision of a vibrant, colorful plant dessicating under false sunlight.The most powerful and and haunting story of the collection is "The Caretaker." A refugee from the Liberian civil war loses his mother and his way of life, washes up on the shores of Oregon, and carves out a new existence for himself on the inhospitable grounds of a software mogul's estate. Broken, haunted by the violent real-life nightmares that drove him from his home, Joseph Saleeby seeks solace in hiding, tending a garden fertilized by the gargantuan remains of a beached whale. His sense of life comes back to dazzling color as the garden germinates: "By mid June the stems of his plants are inches high..the buds have separated into delicate flowers; what loooked like a solid green shoot was actually a tightly folded blossom. He feels like shouting with joy". But there's another encounter in store for Joseph, one that will bring him yet again into a denatured world where he must prove his mettle.Two of the stories--"For a Long Time This Was Griselda's Story" and "July 4th"--are a little less accessible than the others, though no reader will soon forget the unique talents of the metal eater in "For a Long Time..." "July 4th" seems more derivative than the others. It recounts the misadventures of a group of Americans as they search for the best fishing venue in Eastern Europe. Sound like a lost generation, anyone?But these are quibbles. Even the weaker stories teach important lessons. The price of renouncing our natures is a high one, the author seems to say. But it may be inevitable in the course of human life, and it may even purchase a round trip ticket right back to where we belong. And the journey, for all its pain and trauma, can be magical.

Meh. Not for me. I bought this book because the author penned an amazing book called “All the Light We Cannot See” – a novel I loved so much I immediately needed to read everything else Anthony Doerr had written. Sadly, for me, this collection of short stories does not compare. While Doerr’s writing style remains extraordinary and his storytelling eloquent, I found the plotlines to be peculiar and wholly unfulfilling. It’s hard for me to explain it (because I certainly can’t write like Doerr) but the stories themselves, though oddly entertaining, didn’t bring me any enjoyment or satisfaction. Instead, I found myself counting down the pages to see how soon I would finish each story. The plots were mostly just bizarre to me.To Doerr’s credit, I’m sure many others will fully enjoy this collection; the stories are rich with praise for Mother Nature and all her splendid offerings, and they descriptively interlace complex relationships between people and their natural environments. The odd storylines, however, just didn’t appeal to me at all.

I read this collection of short stories after becoming entirely immersed in All the Light we Cannot See and, although I recognise that you cannot become as involved with the characters in a short story, I was a little disappointed in the the characters in the short stories in The Shell Collector. I loved the plots and the ideas behind them, but I do like to have a relationship with characters. What I did love about these stories was the language and Doerr's power of descriptive detail. I found The Caretaker quite disturbing, while my favourite stories were The Hunter's Wife and Mkondo.

I have enjoyed previous books but this was pretty depressing really, gave up a few stories in as child soldiers and graphic killers not my thing. For me the stories really lacked, a point? An ending? A story?

Ich habe von Anthony Doerr vorher "All The Light We Cannot See" gelesen und war begeistert von dem ungewöhnlichen Streibstil. Habe mir daraufhin diese Kurzgeschichtensammlung gekauft, um mehr von ihm zu lesen...Inhalt: Ein Einwanderermädchen schleicht sich nachts raus, um zu angeln. Eine junge Frau verlässt vom einen Moment auf den anderen ihre Kleinstadt, um den Metall-Esser vom Jahrmarkt zu heiraten. Ein alter Mann verliert den Kopf, als ein Brief von seiner Geliebten der falschen Person in die Hände fällt, und angelt die ganze Nacht, bis ein Fisch ihm die Schnur klaut. Ein liberischer Flüchtling pflanzt einen Gemüsegarten im Wald und lernt Zeichensprache von dem tauben Mädchen, das er vom Suizid abgehalten hat.Fazit: Lauter mehr oder weniger kurze Geschichten, die fast alle irgendwie etwas mit Angeln, Wasser und/oder Muscheln zu tun haben. Außerdem wirken die Protagonisten immer furchtbar einsam und als wären sie in der falschen Welt, die einfach ganz anders tickt. Der Schreibstil ist gut, aber man merkt die zwölf Jahre Abstand zu "All The Light We Cannot See". Kurzgeschichten, vor allem so gleichartige, sind offenbar nicht mein Ding und ich musste mich regelmäßig zwingen weiter zu lesen.

Doer is a fantastic author. I believe this is his first published work, so not as engaging as later novels like “All The Light We Cannot See” but still worth reading. Book of short stories , worth it if only to read “The Hunter’s Wife” which I thought was incredible.