Short Story Collection

Six very well-told stories. Seldom do I read an anthology where all the stories are to my liking. The stories may not be filled with happy scenes, but all of them are life affirming, positive, and complete in themselves.

Strangely, I found another copy, from 2011, in my LibraryThing listing. This one was without a review, but was also labeled as five star. Both were public library books. Sadly, I cannot remember reading these stories (about memory no less) before. I did have, for a while, an inkling that I might have seen "The River Nemunas" somewhere in my past, but decided it was only similar to a recalled story.
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Great book, beautiful short stories. He really gets at our inner lives, from a great assortment of different people, esp young people. The first story (the title story) is a little bit science-fiction, but not in a bad way, but the rest aren’t. Locations include South Africa, Lithuania, China, and Holocaust-era Germany as well as the USA, and everything felt very real to me. I’ll be checking out more of Doerr’s work soon. ( )

Solid collection of stories. The title novella is fantastic and would make a good movie. Village 113 is also very good, and the others were OK, but all supportive of the overall memory theme of the collection. ( )

Doerr is a brilliant writer, but I'm not passionate about the stories in this book. For some reason they didn't fascinate me. The first one was incredible--so thought-out, immersing and shocking and beautifully-rendered. It was the only one in which the "memory" theme didn't seem somewhat artificial. The second story, with Herb and Imogene, I also liked. The rest, though the writing was extraordinary, just didn't click with me.

I'm giving four stars for the writing, but the fifth one stays with me. ( )