The Shell Collector
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4.6 • 14 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The showstopping debut from the author of the #1 Sunday Times bestseller ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
A blind man spends his days roaming the beaches of Kenya collecting shells, classifying them by feeling their whorls, spines and folds in his fingers. A young woman discovers that she can explore the inner world of an animal’s mind by touching its freshly dead body. A refugee from Liberia, who cannot escape the horrors that he has witnessed, finds salvation in the clandesitne act of burying the hearts of beached whales.
In The Shell Collector Antony Doerr illuminates both the riotous dangers of the natural world and the rocky terrain of the human heart.
Reviews
‘Extraordinary’ Guardian
‘Exquisite’ The Times
‘A show-stopping debut, as close to faultless as any writer could wish for’ L A Times
‘I can think of very few authors who can put together a sentence with such ecstasy, whose words sing with music and such sheer rapture at what they embody’ The Times
‘Doerr’s prose dazzles from the very beginning’ New York Times
‘Unforgettable – not so much a book of short stories as a book of short myths’ Elizabeth Gilbert (author of EAT, PRAY, LOVE)
About the author
Anthony Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho with his wife and twin sons. He is the author of ‘The Shell Collector’ and ‘About Grace’, and is one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The natural world exerts a powerful, brooding presence in this first collection; it's almost as much a main character as any of the individuals the 26-year-old Doerr records. Nature, in these eight stories, is mysterious and deadly, a wonder of design and of nearly overwhelming power. This delicate balance is evidenced by the title story, about a blind man who spends his days collecting rare and beautiful shell specimens. Self-exiled to the coast of Kenya, he discovers that a certain poisonous snail has the power both to kill and to effect a rapid recovery from malaria. This discovery brings him much attention but little joy, disturbing the carefully ordered universe that he has constructed to manage both his blindness and his temperament. A naturalist's perspective also informs the other stories. In "The Hunter's Wife," Doerr catalogues winter in Montana as "a thousand ladybugs hibernating in an orange ball in a riverbank hollow; a pair of dormant frogs buried in frozen mud." But Doerr can play it funny, too: in "July Fourth," a group of American fishermen endure a hilarious litany of woes in a fishing contest across Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Their troubles include much drinking, few fish and losing their shirts (and all their tackle) to a Belorussian basketball team. The title story could well appear in the next Best Americanor O. Henryanthologies, and the others make a fine supporting cast.
