The Shell Collector

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Anthony Doerr. The Shell Collector

The Shell Collector. Anthony Doerr

Copyright

Praise

Contents

THE SHELL COLLECTOR

THE HUNTER’S WIFE

SO MANY CHANCES

FOR A LONG TIME THIS WAS GRISELDA’S STORY

JULY FOURTH

THE CARETAKER

A TANGLE BY THE RAPID RIVER

MKONDO

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About Grace

All the Light We Cannot See

About the Publisher

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‘These complex, resonant, beautifully realised stories sing. An entire world unfolds in each, memorable and rich; together, they form a remarkable first collection.’

ANDREA BARRETT, author of The Voyage of the Narwhal and Ship Fever

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The shell collector had always suspected that he did not know his son one whit. Josh had been raised by his mother; as a boy he preferred the baseball diamond to the beach, cooking to conchology. And now he was thirty. He seemed so energetic, so good…so stupid. He was like a golden retriever, fetching things, sloppy-tongued, panting, falling over himself to please. He used two days of fresh water giving the Kikuyu boys showers. He spent seventy shillings on a sisal basket that should have cost him seven. He insisted on sending visitors off with care packages, plantains or House of Mangi tea biscuits, wrapped in paper and tied off with yarn.

“You’re doing fine, Pop,” he announced, one evening at the table. He had been there a week. Every night he invited strangers, diseased people, to the dinner table. Tonight it was a paraplegic girl and her mother. Josh spooned chunks of curried potato onto their plates. “You can afford it.” The shell collector said nothing. What could he say? Josh shared his blood; this thirty-year-old dogooder had somehow grown out of him, out of the spirals of his own DNA.

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