#310 The Shell Collector- Anthony Doerr
Doerr writes in pastel colors. Like another writer covered
in this blog, Haruki Murakami, he is able to achieve the sense that you are
dreaming the stories he write. Its beyond beautiful, and more important its
beyond what you know beautiful can be. The creativity, and imagination, and
singular style is breathtaking. Is that enough superlatives to illustrate how
much I like this story?
It is simple enough. A blind man lives in a remote lagoon
outside Lima, Kenya. He is a doctor of marine biology. He lives his life with
his dog, spends his days collecting and marveling at the reef-life. He
discovers miracles, and experiences incredible loss. He is merely an observer,
as the world looks for meaning and value and narrative, he finds only life.
Notable Passage: “He had never comprehended the endless
variations of design…Ignorance was, in the end, and in so many ways, a
privilege: to find a shell, to feel it, to understand only on some unspeakable
level why it bothered to be so lovely. What joy he found in that, what utter
mystery.”
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