#39 The Deep- Anthony Doerr

#39 The Deep- Anthony Doerr

I recently read Doerr’s new Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel, All the Light We Cannot See.  Inspired by that, I looked for some of his earlier short works, and found that I already had one sitting on my desk as part of the That Glimpse of Truth short story compendium. 

Tom is a 14-year old boy with a weak heart and an over-protective single mother. They live in his mother’s boarding house down the road from the salt mines in the years leading to the Great Depression.

The world is very small to Tom, his experience limited to whoever stays at the house. “Every six months a miner gets laid off, gets drafted, or dies, and is replaced by another, so that very early in his life Tom comes to see how the world continually drains itself of young men, leaving behind only objects—empty tobacco pouches, bladeless jackknifes, salt caked trousers—mute, incapable of memory.”

Tom’s world suddenly widens when a charmingly shy girl, Ruby, brings in a picture book of deep-sea creatures to school.  The deep vastness of the ocean excites him and he isn’t sure it’s real.  His weekly excursions to the marsh with Ruby become the enduring joy of his life.

The salt theme could represent the corrosion that eats at his fragile body, or it could represent the working class struggles, but I think it actually represents life in general. Life is an un-halting force that Tom says lives on.  And like life…“every day all day the salt finds its way in.”

This is a near perfect short story. Its charming, soulful, and exceedingly well written. Doerr’s prose has a wonderfully natural musical cadence that makes you want to read it aloud. “Ruby has flames for hair, Christmas for a birthday, and a drunk for a daddy. She’s one of two girls to make it to fourth grade.”  Between the Novel and this story, I’m hooked.  I cant wait for more Doerr.

 Notable Passage: “Images of her climb the undersides of his eyelids, and he rubs them away.”

Rating: 10-9-10-9 Total= 38