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Memory Wall
Set on four continents, Anthony Doerr's collection of stories is about memory: the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others.
In the luminous and beautiful title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In 'The River Nemunas', a teenaged orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. 'Village 113' is about the building of the Three Gorges Dam and the seedkeeper who guards the history of a village soon to be submerged. And in 'Afterworld,' the radiant, cathartic final story, a woman who escaped the Holocaust is haunted by visions of her childhood friends in Germany, yet finds solace in the tender ministrations of her grandson.
The stories in Memory Wall show us how we figure the world, and show Anthony Doerr to be one of the masters of the form.
In the luminous and beautiful title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In 'The River Nemunas', a teenaged orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. 'Village 113' is about the building of the Three Gorges Dam and the seedkeeper who guards the history of a village soon to be submerged. And in 'Afterworld,' the radiant, cathartic final story, a woman who escaped the Holocaust is haunted by visions of her childhood friends in Germany, yet finds solace in the tender ministrations of her grandson.
The stories in Memory Wall show us how we figure the world, and show Anthony Doerr to be one of the masters of the form.
243 pages, Hardcover
First published July 13, 2010
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About the author
Anthony Doerr
53?books24.5k?followersAnthony Doerr is the author of six books, , , , ,
All the Light We Cannot See
, and
Cloud Cuckoo Land
. Doerr is a two-time National Book Award finalist, and his fiction has won five O. Henry Prizes and won a number of prizes including the Pulitzer Prize and the Carnegie Medal. Become a fan on and stay up-to-date on his latest publications.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,163 reviews
September 4, 2010
Tony Doerr knocks it out of the park with this one. His writing is achingly beautiful, at every level. Doerr chooses the perfect words, crafts sentences that make your heart feel too big for your chest, and repeatedly surprises--repeatedly offers up the thing that's both unexpected and exactly right.
The stories are magical in that they each contain something not-quite-of-this world: a memory machine, an epileptic ability to connect across time and space, an impossible sturgeon. It's not flying-monkeys magic, or blood-sucking immortality magic, or any kind of unbelievably supernatural or material witchcraft. No, the magic in these stories is accessible; it feels possible, somehow. It's the kind of magic we all already sort of believe in. Or want to.
And Doerr uses it to elevate the questions he's grappling with here: what we make of memory, and what it makes of us, the nature of love and longing, of connection, between human beings. This is an amazing, beautiful book.
The stories are magical in that they each contain something not-quite-of-this world: a memory machine, an epileptic ability to connect across time and space, an impossible sturgeon. It's not flying-monkeys magic, or blood-sucking immortality magic, or any kind of unbelievably supernatural or material witchcraft. No, the magic in these stories is accessible; it feels possible, somehow. It's the kind of magic we all already sort of believe in. Or want to.
And Doerr uses it to elevate the questions he's grappling with here: what we make of memory, and what it makes of us, the nature of love and longing, of connection, between human beings. This is an amazing, beautiful book.
March 7, 2016
¡°Every hour, all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear, whole glowing atlases dragged into graves. But during that same hour children are moving about, surveying territory that seems to them entirely new. They push back the darkness; they scatter memories behind them like bread crumbs. The world is remade.¡±
No surprise that the stories in Memory Wall all focus on memory, attempts to retrieve it and loss. The three most successful stories (Memory Wall, Village 113 and Afterworld) all feature old women on the verge of losing their memory. Memory Wall itself flutters playfully towards sci-fi. Alma, to combat encroaching dementia, has had many of her memories downloaded onto cartridges ( yeah, you have to huff and puff a bit here to suspend disbelief ) that line the wall of a spare room in her house. One of these cartridges contains the memory of the day her husband Harold, a fossil fanatic, discovered an intact dinosaur skeleton out in the desert before succumbing to a heart attack. Two street urchins, one of whom is a ¡°memory-tapper¡± (he¡¯s had the same operation as Alma) enter her house every night searching for this cartridge. It¡¯s a wacky brilliant story teeming with Doerr¡¯s fabulous stylised lyrical prose and his offsetting of intimate human moments with the eternal impersonal rhythms of the natural world.
The real stunner though is the last story, Afterworld. This reads like an inspired trial run for All the Light We Cannot See. Afterworld tells the story of Esther, a German Jewess who suffers from epilepsy and grows up in a Hamburg orphanage during the years of Nazism. She is the only girl in the orphanage to escape deportation and grows up to become a celebrated illustrator of children¡¯s books. The writing throughout is utterly gorgeous.
Like many books of short stories Memory Wall contains the brilliant, the good and average. Village 113 was good. The River Nemunas read like Doerr had just read all of Nichole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer¡¯s books and had a bash at writing fan fiction. Procreate Generate was okay and I can¡¯t now remember a thing about The Demilitarised Zone. Worth buying though for Memory Wall itself and Afterworld.
No surprise that the stories in Memory Wall all focus on memory, attempts to retrieve it and loss. The three most successful stories (Memory Wall, Village 113 and Afterworld) all feature old women on the verge of losing their memory. Memory Wall itself flutters playfully towards sci-fi. Alma, to combat encroaching dementia, has had many of her memories downloaded onto cartridges ( yeah, you have to huff and puff a bit here to suspend disbelief ) that line the wall of a spare room in her house. One of these cartridges contains the memory of the day her husband Harold, a fossil fanatic, discovered an intact dinosaur skeleton out in the desert before succumbing to a heart attack. Two street urchins, one of whom is a ¡°memory-tapper¡± (he¡¯s had the same operation as Alma) enter her house every night searching for this cartridge. It¡¯s a wacky brilliant story teeming with Doerr¡¯s fabulous stylised lyrical prose and his offsetting of intimate human moments with the eternal impersonal rhythms of the natural world.
The real stunner though is the last story, Afterworld. This reads like an inspired trial run for All the Light We Cannot See. Afterworld tells the story of Esther, a German Jewess who suffers from epilepsy and grows up in a Hamburg orphanage during the years of Nazism. She is the only girl in the orphanage to escape deportation and grows up to become a celebrated illustrator of children¡¯s books. The writing throughout is utterly gorgeous.
Like many books of short stories Memory Wall contains the brilliant, the good and average. Village 113 was good. The River Nemunas read like Doerr had just read all of Nichole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer¡¯s books and had a bash at writing fan fiction. Procreate Generate was okay and I can¡¯t now remember a thing about The Demilitarised Zone. Worth buying though for Memory Wall itself and Afterworld.
March 26, 2023
¡°You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence, our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feelings, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.
¡ª¡ªLuis Bunuel, ¡°My Last Sigh¡±.
*Improvements* ¡..
It¡¯s what people want to hear¡.
Alma was remembering how to remember and ¡®improvement¡¯ is what the doctors and nurses wanted to hear.
¡°Alma can feel, numbly, the rubber caps being twisted out of the ports in her skull and four screws being threaded simultaneously into place¡±.
At a specialized medical clinic doctors were claiming to forge new pathways. ¡°Re-remembering¡±.
Alma was asked if she understood. Not really.
Ever since her husband Harold had died she had been forgetting things.
Two doctors had already diagnosed Alma with dementia.
A doctor had eventually sent Alma home with a memory stimulator and little cartridges of memories of her life on each.
Can you imagine?
I finished this story ¡ª uncertain ¡ªabout how I felt and Luis Bunel¡¯s words ¡ª were associated with my thoughts in regards to the first story.
¡°Life without memories is no life at all¡±¡..
Well¡.? ¡.
For me ¡ª at ¡®first¡¯ those words sound true,
but
on the other hand,
it doesn¡¯t make a life any less valuable. It¡¯s twisted truth¡.misconstruing the truth. (but I might be taking things to literal)
The first story ¡ª jumps right out at us. It is quite thought-provoking¡.and unsettling.
The psychological and emotional impact of a person with dementia may feel a range of emotions: anger, grief, loss, shock, fear ¡..
but they are human, and still have feelings.
To strip them of their dignity- saying their life without memory is no life at all - is actually cruel in my opinion. ¡.
³Û±ð³Ù¡
Hard not to contemplate this:
¡°Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater. Progress is a storm and the wings of everything are swept up in it¡±.
Each of the six short stories ¡ªtraveling the globe through different decades¡ªdeal with themes of memory: losing it¡..and or trying to retrieve it.
¡°The Memory Wall¡±, ¡°Village 113¡± and ¡°Afterworld¡± each had a science fiction type feeling ¡ª
I got value from all of the stories ¡ª fascinating to think about memories disappearing¡ªre-appearing.
The individual stories and characters were each good¡..well researched and outstandingly well written.
My ¡®very¡¯ favorite was the last story called ¡°Afterworld¡±.
It¡¯s about a woman, Esther, a German Jew, who escaped the Holocaust.
Esther was now living Ohio and had epilepsy. Her seizures triggered old memories from her childhood¡ª her friends - from when she lived in a Jewish orphanage.
A little suspending of belief in some of these stories¡but it¡¯s also part of the charm¡..
I just can¡¯t seem to get away from stories dealing with love fragility and loss. ¡..
³Û±ð³Ù¡.
why would I want too?/! ¡.
These type of stories strengthen our relationship bonds together.
And¡.I MUST THANK Laysee ¡. For inspiring me to read these stories!! Thank you Laysee
¡ª¡ªLuis Bunuel, ¡°My Last Sigh¡±.
*Improvements* ¡..
It¡¯s what people want to hear¡.
Alma was remembering how to remember and ¡®improvement¡¯ is what the doctors and nurses wanted to hear.
¡°Alma can feel, numbly, the rubber caps being twisted out of the ports in her skull and four screws being threaded simultaneously into place¡±.
At a specialized medical clinic doctors were claiming to forge new pathways. ¡°Re-remembering¡±.
Alma was asked if she understood. Not really.
Ever since her husband Harold had died she had been forgetting things.
Two doctors had already diagnosed Alma with dementia.
A doctor had eventually sent Alma home with a memory stimulator and little cartridges of memories of her life on each.
Can you imagine?
I finished this story ¡ª uncertain ¡ªabout how I felt and Luis Bunel¡¯s words ¡ª were associated with my thoughts in regards to the first story.
¡°Life without memories is no life at all¡±¡..
Well¡.? ¡.
For me ¡ª at ¡®first¡¯ those words sound true,
but
on the other hand,
it doesn¡¯t make a life any less valuable. It¡¯s twisted truth¡.misconstruing the truth. (but I might be taking things to literal)
The first story ¡ª jumps right out at us. It is quite thought-provoking¡.and unsettling.
The psychological and emotional impact of a person with dementia may feel a range of emotions: anger, grief, loss, shock, fear ¡..
but they are human, and still have feelings.
To strip them of their dignity- saying their life without memory is no life at all - is actually cruel in my opinion. ¡.
³Û±ð³Ù¡
Hard not to contemplate this:
¡°Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater. Progress is a storm and the wings of everything are swept up in it¡±.
Each of the six short stories ¡ªtraveling the globe through different decades¡ªdeal with themes of memory: losing it¡..and or trying to retrieve it.
¡°The Memory Wall¡±, ¡°Village 113¡± and ¡°Afterworld¡± each had a science fiction type feeling ¡ª
I got value from all of the stories ¡ª fascinating to think about memories disappearing¡ªre-appearing.
The individual stories and characters were each good¡..well researched and outstandingly well written.
My ¡®very¡¯ favorite was the last story called ¡°Afterworld¡±.
It¡¯s about a woman, Esther, a German Jew, who escaped the Holocaust.
Esther was now living Ohio and had epilepsy. Her seizures triggered old memories from her childhood¡ª her friends - from when she lived in a Jewish orphanage.
A little suspending of belief in some of these stories¡but it¡¯s also part of the charm¡..
I just can¡¯t seem to get away from stories dealing with love fragility and loss. ¡..
³Û±ð³Ù¡.
why would I want too?/! ¡.
These type of stories strengthen our relationship bonds together.
And¡.I MUST THANK Laysee ¡. For inspiring me to read these stories!! Thank you Laysee
October 5, 2011
I want to marry Anthony Doerr. Oh, wait, I'm already married. Then I'll have to do the next best thing: read everything else he's written, because I love the company of his mind, love traveling through his continents, inspecting with his creations the symbols and shards of memory that form a life and its contingencies. Doerr's tight writing paradoxically evokes whole worlds of culture, time, history, and real, breathing characters. We go to Africa, Lithuania, Germany, Wyoming, China in this collection of stories, each a strange world unto itself. "Now my husband," Alma says suddenly, not quite speaking to Pheko but to the kitchen at large, 'his passion was always rocks. Rocks and the dead things in them.'" Without saying she has Alzheimer's we suffer the same conflation of sense perceptions; we climb into a deteriorating brain that has moments of clarity but can't stay organized. "'To say a person is a happy person or an unhappy person is ridiculous. We are a thousand different kinds of people every hour.' She looks at Pheko then, though not quite directly at him. As if a guest floats behind him and to his left. Fog seeps through the garden. The trees disappear. The lounge chairs disappear. "'Don't you think?'" Doerr takes a character like this, then, and subjects her to multiple house-break-ins, as thugs search her home each night for one of her late husband's important finds. She knows something is wrong but can't quite place it or remember each night and its violence-seething thievery, and this set up gives us a strange mix of poignancy and tension. You don't know where Doerr will take you, but you want to go, and you strongly suspect that it's the characters themselves, not Doerr, doing all the driving.
October 25, 2019
I read this for a face to face book group that took place last night at my local independent bookshop Five Leaves. It is not a book I would have been likely to choose for myself but it certainly made for a lively and interesting discussion. I have never read Doerr before.
This book is a collection of a novella and five stories, set in several continents at various times in recent history, linked by a theme of memory, how it works, how it shapes lives and what happens when it is lost. The prose often seems plain and direct, but has a poetic precision.
The title novella which opens the collection is set in South Africa. Alma, A widow lives alone in a gated house with her loyal "house boy" Pheko. She is suffering from Alzheimer's, and is participating in a form of therapy (here we enter the realm of sci-fi) in which her memories are captured on cartridges, which she arranges on a wall. Her late husband was a fossil enthusiast, whose death from a heart attack was due to a spectacular find on the "Karoo". An unscrupulous collector breaks into the house with a young street boy looking to harvest the memories to discover the location of the lost fossil.
The other stories that impressed me most were The River Nemunas, in which a 15 year old orphan girl from the mid West goes to live with her grandfather in Lithuania, and Afterworld, in which a dying holocaust escapee and epileptic remembers her war experiences in a Hamburg orphanage while being cared for by her American grandson.
Doerr is strong on characterisation and descriptions of places. My main reservations were that some of his plot contrivances were either a little too visible or just defied belief. Overall I found it an enjoyable read.
This book is a collection of a novella and five stories, set in several continents at various times in recent history, linked by a theme of memory, how it works, how it shapes lives and what happens when it is lost. The prose often seems plain and direct, but has a poetic precision.
The title novella which opens the collection is set in South Africa. Alma, A widow lives alone in a gated house with her loyal "house boy" Pheko. She is suffering from Alzheimer's, and is participating in a form of therapy (here we enter the realm of sci-fi) in which her memories are captured on cartridges, which she arranges on a wall. Her late husband was a fossil enthusiast, whose death from a heart attack was due to a spectacular find on the "Karoo". An unscrupulous collector breaks into the house with a young street boy looking to harvest the memories to discover the location of the lost fossil.
The other stories that impressed me most were The River Nemunas, in which a 15 year old orphan girl from the mid West goes to live with her grandfather in Lithuania, and Afterworld, in which a dying holocaust escapee and epileptic remembers her war experiences in a Hamburg orphanage while being cared for by her American grandson.
Doerr is strong on characterisation and descriptions of places. My main reservations were that some of his plot contrivances were either a little too visible or just defied belief. Overall I found it an enjoyable read.
February 16, 2011
This is my first experience reading Anthony Doerr, but it will not be the last. I loved reading these stories. My reactions varied throughout from frustration to sadness to happiness to occasional fleeting moments of joy as I watched these people struggling with momentous choices or small, repeating incidents building in their lives. The concept of memory and it's place in our everyday lives is used from many different angles, effectively from my view.
To say much more would be to try to summarize the stories themselves which I really don't want to do. That's better left to a reader or to reading the summary on a book jacket.
To say much more would be to try to summarize the stories themselves which I really don't want to do. That's better left to a reader or to reading the summary on a book jacket.
August 30, 2017
BABTJust 'Afterworld' from this collection.
Description: Esther, who is an epileptic, escaped Nazi Germany when she was a child and has lived contentedly in Ohio with her husband and their son. Now 85, her fits have intensified and she is haunted by visions of her childhood friends from the orphanage she grew up in. They appear to be calling to her, as memories from her past flood in. Anthony Doerr is an American author of novels and short stories. He gained widespread recognition for his 2014 novel All The Light We Cannot See which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Afterworld is taken from Memory Wall, a collection of stories about memory.
Episode 1: Esther's seizures open up a new world where old friends await.Episode 2: Esther was ten when change came with the arrival of an emigration letter.Episode 3: Miriam calls to Esther through a microphone.Episode 4: Esther tells her grandson Robert about the girls from the orphanage.Episode 5: Miriam's voice is getting stronger. 
December 21, 2010
I am a huge fan of The Shell Collector, so was a bit worried when I started reading this collection. The first story takes a rather dystopian view, writing I don't usually warm up to. However, I soon realized that Doerr has chosen to go in a different direction than those stories of his past. He challenged himself, and more than rose to the occasion. I have never read writing quite like this, especially in two of the stories, Memory Wall and Afterworld. And when I was taken abruptly out of these lyrical worlds into the more realistic one in The River Nemunas, I almost balked. However, this story drew me in as well, and ended up portraying one of the most touching relationships in the book, between an orphan and a woman in the last stages of senility and life. What a gift, to be able to imagine so many different worlds, in different styles and language. Simply, a brilliant mind exploring every reach of the human mind with scientific wonder and tenderness.
A must read for fans of literary fiction.
A must read for fans of literary fiction.
April 21, 2018
4,5
Veinte mil d¨ªas y noches en un lugar, cada cual acodada, atrapada y plegada encima de la anterior, las l¨ªneas de sus manos, los dolores entre las v¨¦rtebras. Embri¨®n, tegumento, endosperma: ?qu¨¦ es una semilla sino la forma m¨¢s pura de recuerdo, un v¨ªnculo con todas las generaciones que la han precedido?
El muro de la memoria 3/5
Procrear, Generar 5/5 ;D
La zona desmilitarizada 5/5
El pueblo 1113 5/5
El r¨ªo Niemen 5/5 ;D
El m¨¢s alla 5/5 ;D
Las profundidades 4/5
Veinte mil d¨ªas y noches en un lugar, cada cual acodada, atrapada y plegada encima de la anterior, las l¨ªneas de sus manos, los dolores entre las v¨¦rtebras. Embri¨®n, tegumento, endosperma: ?qu¨¦ es una semilla sino la forma m¨¢s pura de recuerdo, un v¨ªnculo con todas las generaciones que la han precedido?
El muro de la memoria 3/5
Procrear, Generar 5/5 ;D
La zona desmilitarizada 5/5
El pueblo 1113 5/5
El r¨ªo Niemen 5/5 ;D
El m¨¢s alla 5/5 ;D
Las profundidades 4/5
March 24, 2015
Aldous Huxley once famously said, ¡°Every man¡¯s memory is his private literature.¡± In this luminous collection of short stories (including an 83 page novella), Anthony Doerr probes the fragility and endurance of memory, in locales that vary from South Africa to Hamburg¡from Lithuania to Wyoming¡and from the heinousness of the Holocaust to an immediate dystopian future.
This masterful collection is bookmarked by an opening and an ending story with two diverse elderly women as key protagonists. The title story, Memory Wall, presents the elderly Alma, who lives in South Africa where she undergoes periodic ¡°harvesting¡± of memories, stored on a series of numbered cartridges. By ¡°hooking herself up¡±, she is able to recreate experiences to stave off her worsening dementia. She falls victim to a criminal and his accomplice ¡°memory hunter¡± who attempt to rummage through these cartridges to find the location of a rare and lucrative gorgon fossil ¨C one that will be the ticket to the good life that has been denied them. The young accomplish muses, ¡±Dr. Amnesty¡¯s cartridges, the South African Museum, Harold¡¯s fossils, Chefe Carpenter¡¯s collection, Alma¡¯s memory wall ¨C weren¡¯t they all ways of trying to defy erasure? What is memory anyway? How can it be such a frail, perishable thing?¡±
The ending story also focuses on an elderly woman ¨C in this case, Esther, an orphan and an epileptic, who was spared the fate of her many close friends in Birkenau. Now in her early 80s and living in suburban Cleveland, her seizures are getting worse and she returns again and again in her mind to poignant, nightmarish memories of her times in ravaged Hamburg, as she relives her survivors guilt. As he watches her deterioration, her grandson Robert reflects, ¡°Every hour¡all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear, whole glowing atlases dragged into graves. But during the same hour, children are moving about, surveying territory that to them is totally new.¡±
As in most short story collections, each reader will likely have his or her favorites. One of mine is the fable-like Village 113; the Three Gorges Dam is about to be built, submerging a village and forcing its inhabitants to relocate. The tale is relayed by seed keeper, whose engineer son is spearheading the project. Doerr writes, ¡°Memory is a house with ten thousand rooms; it is a village slated to be inundated.¡± The seed keeper and the schoolteacher are quite literally drowning in memories.
Each of Anthony Doerr's well-crafted stories focuses on the most important things in life: birth, death, survival, solace, but most of all the memories.
This masterful collection is bookmarked by an opening and an ending story with two diverse elderly women as key protagonists. The title story, Memory Wall, presents the elderly Alma, who lives in South Africa where she undergoes periodic ¡°harvesting¡± of memories, stored on a series of numbered cartridges. By ¡°hooking herself up¡±, she is able to recreate experiences to stave off her worsening dementia. She falls victim to a criminal and his accomplice ¡°memory hunter¡± who attempt to rummage through these cartridges to find the location of a rare and lucrative gorgon fossil ¨C one that will be the ticket to the good life that has been denied them. The young accomplish muses, ¡±Dr. Amnesty¡¯s cartridges, the South African Museum, Harold¡¯s fossils, Chefe Carpenter¡¯s collection, Alma¡¯s memory wall ¨C weren¡¯t they all ways of trying to defy erasure? What is memory anyway? How can it be such a frail, perishable thing?¡±
The ending story also focuses on an elderly woman ¨C in this case, Esther, an orphan and an epileptic, who was spared the fate of her many close friends in Birkenau. Now in her early 80s and living in suburban Cleveland, her seizures are getting worse and she returns again and again in her mind to poignant, nightmarish memories of her times in ravaged Hamburg, as she relives her survivors guilt. As he watches her deterioration, her grandson Robert reflects, ¡°Every hour¡all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear, whole glowing atlases dragged into graves. But during the same hour, children are moving about, surveying territory that to them is totally new.¡±
As in most short story collections, each reader will likely have his or her favorites. One of mine is the fable-like Village 113; the Three Gorges Dam is about to be built, submerging a village and forcing its inhabitants to relocate. The tale is relayed by seed keeper, whose engineer son is spearheading the project. Doerr writes, ¡°Memory is a house with ten thousand rooms; it is a village slated to be inundated.¡± The seed keeper and the schoolteacher are quite literally drowning in memories.
Each of Anthony Doerr's well-crafted stories focuses on the most important things in life: birth, death, survival, solace, but most of all the memories.
Read
July 25, 2011Wow. This book really knocked me out. The six stories in Anthony Doerr's fantastic collection each deal with memory--what memories (and their loss) mean to us, how they move us and how conscious we are in the creation of new memories. (A character in the first story says "Remember a memory often enough and you can create a new memory, the memory of remembering.")
Each story has a wholly different premise and different main characters, and takes place in a completely difference place and time, from the lengthy opening story about a town in South Africa where doctors have developed a procedure to harvest memories from those suffering from dementia in the hopes of rebuilding some of the brain's connections, to the concluding story about a dying woman struggling with early memories of growing up in Nazi Germany. And each has its own power¡ªsome hit you between the eyes while some slowly build in your mind.
This is a tremendously well-written book that really has me thinking about my own memories. Doerr has done a fantastic job, and I can honestly say this is one of the best books I've read all year.
Each story has a wholly different premise and different main characters, and takes place in a completely difference place and time, from the lengthy opening story about a town in South Africa where doctors have developed a procedure to harvest memories from those suffering from dementia in the hopes of rebuilding some of the brain's connections, to the concluding story about a dying woman struggling with early memories of growing up in Nazi Germany. And each has its own power¡ªsome hit you between the eyes while some slowly build in your mind.
This is a tremendously well-written book that really has me thinking about my own memories. Doerr has done a fantastic job, and I can honestly say this is one of the best books I've read all year.
February 29, 2016
Podcasts have really been influencing my reading lately. This is the second book I went looking for after the "Forbidden Crushes" episode of (the first was by Jay Ponteri.) This collection of stories had nothing to do with the topic of forbidden crushes, but was mentioned in passing. Most people know Doerr from his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, , but he had published a few books prior to that success. I was unfamiliar with his previous works and decided to read these stories.
Memory Wall
The title story, this is more of a novella, about a woman who has been undergoing treatment for memory loss. She is an elderly white South African who grew up during apartheid. A thief has employed an orphan to steal her memories to try to find the fossil her husband discovered the day he died of a heart attack. Set in the near future and moving rapidly between points of view and memories, the story is sad in many ways.
Procreate, Generate
A detailed look at a couple as they try everything to conceive, where suddenly bodies become more like machines.
The Demilitarized Zone
Told partially through letters from Korea to a parent, this one was less successful to me.
Village 113
My absolutely favorite story, about a seed keeper living in a Chinese village that is about to be submerged because of a dam. The writing is beautiful, the characters are unique, and I will remember this one.
The River Nemunas
After both her parents die of cancer in the span of a few months, a young girl moves to Lithuania to live with her grandfather. Memory, grief,life.
Afterworld
Esther is close to the end of her life, and seizures transport her to a parallel world where the children she lived with in an orphanage are waiting for her. As a child, the seizures helped her understand she needed to wait until everyone she knew was dead.... this one was a wee bit confusing but I can see his spark of interest in World War II that was more fully developed in All the Light We Cannot See.
Memory Wall
The title story, this is more of a novella, about a woman who has been undergoing treatment for memory loss. She is an elderly white South African who grew up during apartheid. A thief has employed an orphan to steal her memories to try to find the fossil her husband discovered the day he died of a heart attack. Set in the near future and moving rapidly between points of view and memories, the story is sad in many ways.
Procreate, Generate
A detailed look at a couple as they try everything to conceive, where suddenly bodies become more like machines.
The Demilitarized Zone
Told partially through letters from Korea to a parent, this one was less successful to me.
Village 113
My absolutely favorite story, about a seed keeper living in a Chinese village that is about to be submerged because of a dam. The writing is beautiful, the characters are unique, and I will remember this one.
The River Nemunas
After both her parents die of cancer in the span of a few months, a young girl moves to Lithuania to live with her grandfather. Memory, grief,life.
Afterworld
Esther is close to the end of her life, and seizures transport her to a parallel world where the children she lived with in an orphanage are waiting for her. As a child, the seizures helped her understand she needed to wait until everyone she knew was dead.... this one was a wee bit confusing but I can see his spark of interest in World War II that was more fully developed in All the Light We Cannot See.
January 20, 2016
Dorova re?enica je prelepa: elegantna, ne?na, uzvi?ena. ?ovek barata jezikom kao retko ko, sve je ta?no gde treba da bude, svaka re? ple?e na neki na?in i ?ini da tekst odi?e nekom lepotom koja se ne sre?e ?esto.
Ovo je Dorova druga zbirka pri?a i bavi se ?irokim spektrom tema kroz pojam uspomena. Nijedna pri?a nije sasvim ista, iako ih spaja taj motiv onoga ?to je bilo, onoga ?to nas odredjuje i ?ini ljudima. Istakao bih Dorovo divljenje prirodi kao klju?no u skoro svakom njegovom delu (pa ?ak i u Svetlima). ?ovek ume da vidi ono ?to svi vidimo, a ne prime?ujemo. Veli?anstvenost svakodnevnice, veli?anstvenost jedne pahulje izgubljene u snegu. Dor pi?e pesme u prozi.
Nijedna pri?a nije lo?a, nijedna nije tzv. filler i ocenio bih ih ovako:
Memory Wall - na devedeset stranica posti?e ono ?to romani ?esto ne uspevaju, prosto nas tera da se pove?emo sa likovima i sa njihovim emocijama, da pro?ivimo neki drugi ?ivot kroz tudje uspomene. Saj-faj temelji takodje ?ine ovu pri?u posebnom. 5+
Procreate, Generate - iako prati pomalo ve? ustaljene obrasce pri?e i obradjuje ve? dosta obradjenu tematiku potomstva, Dorov stil je ?ini upe?atljivom. 4
The Demilitarized Zone - kratko, duboko, prelepo. Jedino mi je ?ao ?to zbog du?ine pri?e nisam mogao da se bolje upoznam sa likovima ala Memory Wall. 5-
Village 113 - oda prirodi i upozorenje na promenu. Ne mogu vi?e da ovo istaknem, ali Dor stvarno savr?eno pi?e, medjutim ova pri?a me iz nekog razloga nije toliko dotakla, uprkos prefinjenosti proze. Mo?da mi jednostavno nije bio dan kada sam je ?itao. 4-
The River Nemunas - postavlja neverovatno jednostavno, a su?tinsko pitanje: ?ta je vera ako ne uspomena? Jo? jednom sna?ni likovi i jo? sna?nija alegorija, ?ista petica. 5
The Afterworld - o ovoj ne?u ni?ta posebno da ka?em, kako ne bih pokvario bilo ?ta, osim da je ova pri?a vrhunac i vi?e nego promi?ljen kraj zbirke. Stoji rame uz rame sa Memory Wall-om. 5+
I kad se sve to sra?una i podeli, to mu dodje petica za celu zbirku. Ali i da su 4 od 6 pri?a bile lo?e, a ove druge dve bile The Afterworld i Memory Wall, Dorova zbirka bi zaslu?ila svaku preporuku.
5
Ovo je Dorova druga zbirka pri?a i bavi se ?irokim spektrom tema kroz pojam uspomena. Nijedna pri?a nije sasvim ista, iako ih spaja taj motiv onoga ?to je bilo, onoga ?to nas odredjuje i ?ini ljudima. Istakao bih Dorovo divljenje prirodi kao klju?no u skoro svakom njegovom delu (pa ?ak i u Svetlima). ?ovek ume da vidi ono ?to svi vidimo, a ne prime?ujemo. Veli?anstvenost svakodnevnice, veli?anstvenost jedne pahulje izgubljene u snegu. Dor pi?e pesme u prozi.
Nijedna pri?a nije lo?a, nijedna nije tzv. filler i ocenio bih ih ovako:
Memory Wall - na devedeset stranica posti?e ono ?to romani ?esto ne uspevaju, prosto nas tera da se pove?emo sa likovima i sa njihovim emocijama, da pro?ivimo neki drugi ?ivot kroz tudje uspomene. Saj-faj temelji takodje ?ine ovu pri?u posebnom. 5+
Procreate, Generate - iako prati pomalo ve? ustaljene obrasce pri?e i obradjuje ve? dosta obradjenu tematiku potomstva, Dorov stil je ?ini upe?atljivom. 4
The Demilitarized Zone - kratko, duboko, prelepo. Jedino mi je ?ao ?to zbog du?ine pri?e nisam mogao da se bolje upoznam sa likovima ala Memory Wall. 5-
Village 113 - oda prirodi i upozorenje na promenu. Ne mogu vi?e da ovo istaknem, ali Dor stvarno savr?eno pi?e, medjutim ova pri?a me iz nekog razloga nije toliko dotakla, uprkos prefinjenosti proze. Mo?da mi jednostavno nije bio dan kada sam je ?itao. 4-
The River Nemunas - postavlja neverovatno jednostavno, a su?tinsko pitanje: ?ta je vera ako ne uspomena? Jo? jednom sna?ni likovi i jo? sna?nija alegorija, ?ista petica. 5
The Afterworld - o ovoj ne?u ni?ta posebno da ka?em, kako ne bih pokvario bilo ?ta, osim da je ova pri?a vrhunac i vi?e nego promi?ljen kraj zbirke. Stoji rame uz rame sa Memory Wall-om. 5+
I kad se sve to sra?una i podeli, to mu dodje petica za celu zbirku. Ali i da su 4 od 6 pri?a bile lo?e, a ove druge dve bile The Afterworld i Memory Wall, Dorova zbirka bi zaslu?ila svaku preporuku.
5
November 27, 2019
This is a beautiful collection of stories that explore memory, its power, its pain, and how it affects who we are and how we live. I found every story meaningful. I choked up repeatedly--I was not prepared for how sad and poignant the stories are.
The title story is a futuristic tale of a time when memories can be extracted from the mind and kept in cartridges. The story is set in South Africa and deals with apartheid as well as the memory loss of the elderly woman, Alma, the subject of the story.
In The River Nemunas, a 15 year old orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather following the death of her parents. She struggles with her grief and her difficulty summoning memories of her parents. She befriends (or is befriended by) an elderly woman with dementia. I loved Alison; Doerr evokes her loneliness and pain so well I felt I was with her in her sadness.
Every story in this book is a gem. It's the kind of book I want to read again--it I can deal with the emotions it triggers.
The title story is a futuristic tale of a time when memories can be extracted from the mind and kept in cartridges. The story is set in South Africa and deals with apartheid as well as the memory loss of the elderly woman, Alma, the subject of the story.
In The River Nemunas, a 15 year old orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather following the death of her parents. She struggles with her grief and her difficulty summoning memories of her parents. She befriends (or is befriended by) an elderly woman with dementia. I loved Alison; Doerr evokes her loneliness and pain so well I felt I was with her in her sadness.
Every story in this book is a gem. It's the kind of book I want to read again--it I can deal with the emotions it triggers.
November 3, 2011
My only complaint with this book is that it came to an end.
December 27, 2021
Schon im Febraur beendet.
Ein packendes Buch und ganz anders, als der Klappentext einen glauben machen will. Abzug nur f¨¹r den etwas ruckeligen Schreibstil. Ich bin noch immer nicht sicher, ob es in unserer Zeit, in der Zukunft oder einer Parallelwelt spielt.
Lieblingszitat: "Nichts bleibt", sagte Harold. "Das etwas versteinert, ist ein Wunder. Die Chancen stehen eins zu f¨¹nfzig Millionen. Der Rest von uns? Wir verschwinden im Gras, in K?fern, in W¨¹rmern, in Lichtstfeifen."
Ein packendes Buch und ganz anders, als der Klappentext einen glauben machen will. Abzug nur f¨¹r den etwas ruckeligen Schreibstil. Ich bin noch immer nicht sicher, ob es in unserer Zeit, in der Zukunft oder einer Parallelwelt spielt.
Lieblingszitat: "Nichts bleibt", sagte Harold. "Das etwas versteinert, ist ein Wunder. Die Chancen stehen eins zu f¨¹nfzig Millionen. Der Rest von uns? Wir verschwinden im Gras, in K?fern, in W¨¹rmern, in Lichtstfeifen."
February 8, 2012
Every now and then I find a piece of literature that proves that a certain alignment of letters on a page can totally surpass being classified as 'language' and express the deepest echoes of the human heart. This miracle of storytelling happened for me a couple of times in this book. Where you simply have to stop, close your eyes, and literally feel the pull of the words as they pluck your individual heart strings. This is a collection of short stories. Varying tales of love and loss, and the fragility of the memories we retain, and rebuild, of both. With the first and last stories most definitely worthy of 6 stars the whole book easily earns 5 of them from me. The first story Memory Wall, presents an extremely original concept, where memories are retained on 'cartridges' so they can be veiwed later. Doerr took my breath away with these two paragraphs, that prefectly describe the effects of dementia.....
'Each cartridge on Alma's wall becomes a little brazier, burning in the darkness. Luvo wanders between them, gradually exploring the labyrinth of her history. Maybe, he thinks, at the beginning, before the disease had done its worst, the wall offered Alma a measure of control over what was happening to her. Maybe she could hang a cartridge on a nail and find it a day or two later and feel her brain successfully recall the same memory again - a new pathway forged through the dustlight.
When it worked, it must have been like descending into a pitch-black cellar fora jar of preserves, and finding the jar waiting there - cool and heavy, so she bring it up the bowed and dusty stairs into the light of hte kitchen. For a while it must have worked for Alma, anyway; it must have helped her believe she could fend off her inevitable erasure.'
Seriously, ... her inevitable erasure... can words more exquisitely paint the slow erosion of memory?
And in the final story, a grandson remembers his beloved Grandmother, and beautifully ponders the dual directionality of life .... 'We return to the places we're from; we trample faded corners and pencil in new lines. "You've grown up so fast," Robert's mother tells him at breakfast, "look at you". But she's wrong, thinks Robert. You bury your childhood here and there. It waits for you, all your life, to come abck and dig it up.'
Doerr is a writing I will be keeping on the top of my list, and I can't wait to get my hands on his other books. He most certainly has the skill to turn a great craft into a work of art.
'Each cartridge on Alma's wall becomes a little brazier, burning in the darkness. Luvo wanders between them, gradually exploring the labyrinth of her history. Maybe, he thinks, at the beginning, before the disease had done its worst, the wall offered Alma a measure of control over what was happening to her. Maybe she could hang a cartridge on a nail and find it a day or two later and feel her brain successfully recall the same memory again - a new pathway forged through the dustlight.
When it worked, it must have been like descending into a pitch-black cellar fora jar of preserves, and finding the jar waiting there - cool and heavy, so she bring it up the bowed and dusty stairs into the light of hte kitchen. For a while it must have worked for Alma, anyway; it must have helped her believe she could fend off her inevitable erasure.'
Seriously, ... her inevitable erasure... can words more exquisitely paint the slow erosion of memory?
And in the final story, a grandson remembers his beloved Grandmother, and beautifully ponders the dual directionality of life .... 'We return to the places we're from; we trample faded corners and pencil in new lines. "You've grown up so fast," Robert's mother tells him at breakfast, "look at you". But she's wrong, thinks Robert. You bury your childhood here and there. It waits for you, all your life, to come abck and dig it up.'
Doerr is a writing I will be keeping on the top of my list, and I can't wait to get my hands on his other books. He most certainly has the skill to turn a great craft into a work of art.
January 12, 2011
Update: I'm thrilled that Memory Wall is one of three nominees for the Story Prize. Now I have to catch up with the others. Here's my prepress review from Library Journal.
Library Journal
Suppose you've entered the foreign territory of senile dementia and a surgical procedure could charge your brain's damaged neurons and make your memories available to you once again. That's the supposition behind "Memory Wall," the title story of Doerr's compelling new collection and the metaphorical underpinning for the five stories that accompany it. But rest assured, this is not magical realism. No shape shifting or prestidigitation takes place in these intensely observed narratives, which capture what poet Elizabeth Bishop has called "a mind thinking." That mind could belong to a 15-year-old girl from Kansas getting off a plane in Lithuania with a poodle (memorably) named Mishap, a nonagenarian Holocaust survivor with a seizure disorder, or a fertility-challenged couple in Idaho who must document their every move and who may or may not have finally achieved their objective. Acclaimed author Doerr (The Shell Collector) is equally at home in long and short form, as his numerous O. Henry Awards and presence in anthologies attest. VERDICT This book is a gift to the memory-impaired reader in all of us. Reading it will recharge your neurons and stimulate a few memories of its own.¡ªSue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA
Library Journal
Suppose you've entered the foreign territory of senile dementia and a surgical procedure could charge your brain's damaged neurons and make your memories available to you once again. That's the supposition behind "Memory Wall," the title story of Doerr's compelling new collection and the metaphorical underpinning for the five stories that accompany it. But rest assured, this is not magical realism. No shape shifting or prestidigitation takes place in these intensely observed narratives, which capture what poet Elizabeth Bishop has called "a mind thinking." That mind could belong to a 15-year-old girl from Kansas getting off a plane in Lithuania with a poodle (memorably) named Mishap, a nonagenarian Holocaust survivor with a seizure disorder, or a fertility-challenged couple in Idaho who must document their every move and who may or may not have finally achieved their objective. Acclaimed author Doerr (The Shell Collector) is equally at home in long and short form, as his numerous O. Henry Awards and presence in anthologies attest. VERDICT This book is a gift to the memory-impaired reader in all of us. Reading it will recharge your neurons and stimulate a few memories of its own.¡ªSue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA
November 19, 2015
"Memory Wall" - the first story really knocked my socks off. This is set in South Africa during a time when doctors can implant a device in your head to help combat dementia. There is a lot to this story, but I don't want to give it all away.
"Procreate, Generate" - a couple struggles with the stress of infertility.
"The Demilitarized Zone" - a divorced couple corresponds with their son who is away at war.
"Village 113" - an entire village is about to be flooded out for the advancement of civilization. The engineer making it happen returns home and attempts to talk his mother out of leaving.
"The River Nemunas" - Allison is fifteen when both her parents die. She is sent to Lithuania to live with her maternal grandfather. This is her story of grieving.
"Afterworld" - this a story about Esther - in her eighties and when she is a girl - and it is so sad and heartbreaking. But, Doerr handles the subject matter with grace.
Wow. I am so glad I found my way to Doerr. I think he may be my favorite writer. He has such a gift with words. When I am reading his books, I feel completely transported to whatever world he is creating.
Phenomenal.
"Procreate, Generate" - a couple struggles with the stress of infertility.
"The Demilitarized Zone" - a divorced couple corresponds with their son who is away at war.
"Village 113" - an entire village is about to be flooded out for the advancement of civilization. The engineer making it happen returns home and attempts to talk his mother out of leaving.
"The River Nemunas" - Allison is fifteen when both her parents die. She is sent to Lithuania to live with her maternal grandfather. This is her story of grieving.
"Afterworld" - this a story about Esther - in her eighties and when she is a girl - and it is so sad and heartbreaking. But, Doerr handles the subject matter with grace.
Wow. I am so glad I found my way to Doerr. I think he may be my favorite writer. He has such a gift with words. When I am reading his books, I feel completely transported to whatever world he is creating.
Phenomenal.
February 4, 2011
Phenomenal. Still reeling from its awesomeness.
When I finished this book, I remained stuck in a sort of trance state, sitting in my living room, but traveling through the worlds that Doerr created. I even lived through a particularly crowded and harrowing commute home without even flinching because I was so rapt by this book.
This collection of short stories was so vivid - the last one especially. Without giving too much away, its exploration of epilepsy and memories, practically time travel, made me think back to "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," and how disabilities might be conceived as gifts. I've been thinking about the themes and characters in this book for weeks now and simply cannot write a review that does it justice. If you're like me, this book will cause you to reflect on what memories mean, what gives our lives meaning, and how a great story can leave an imprint on your heart. Cheesy, I know, but I'm serious.
When I finished this book, I remained stuck in a sort of trance state, sitting in my living room, but traveling through the worlds that Doerr created. I even lived through a particularly crowded and harrowing commute home without even flinching because I was so rapt by this book.
This collection of short stories was so vivid - the last one especially. Without giving too much away, its exploration of epilepsy and memories, practically time travel, made me think back to "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," and how disabilities might be conceived as gifts. I've been thinking about the themes and characters in this book for weeks now and simply cannot write a review that does it justice. If you're like me, this book will cause you to reflect on what memories mean, what gives our lives meaning, and how a great story can leave an imprint on your heart. Cheesy, I know, but I'm serious.
March 22, 2021
De este autor le¨ª ¡°la luz que no puedes ver¡± un libro precioso pero, a la vez muy triste. Quer¨ªa probar con este porque es de relatos. Un libro con siete relatos de muy distintos rasgos, incluso algunos de distinto g¨¦nero, pero con un nexo com¨²n, la memoria. La memoria es lo que nos humaniza o deshumaniza, seg¨²n sea el caso si la tenemos o la hemos perdido. Reconozco que escribe muy bien pero, para mi, son historias demasiado tristes. Yo lo he ido mezclando con otros libros, quiz¨¢s sea lo ideal para no leer tanta pena junta. Si os gusta su forma de escribir seguramente estos relatos tambi¨¦n os deleitar¨¢n.
July 23, 2019
Mein erster Anthony Doerr l?sst mich leider eher ratlos zur¨¹ck, ob ich weitere Werke lesen sollte.
Die Grundidee der Erinnerungslagerung finde ich sehr interessant. Allerdings bleiben f¨¹r die Gesamtheit der knapp 125 Seiten die Ideen und Charaktere nur angeschnitten und oberfl?chlich. Dem Buch h?tte es meiner Meinung gut getan wenn man es auf einen Roman ausgedehnt h?tte und nicht in Form einer Novelle dargelegt h?tte.
Die Grundidee der Erinnerungslagerung finde ich sehr interessant. Allerdings bleiben f¨¹r die Gesamtheit der knapp 125 Seiten die Ideen und Charaktere nur angeschnitten und oberfl?chlich. Dem Buch h?tte es meiner Meinung gut getan wenn man es auf einen Roman ausgedehnt h?tte und nicht in Form einer Novelle dargelegt h?tte.
March 20, 2021
Pues no lo abandone al principio por el morbo del relato del holocausto, la verdad.
No me ha gustado nada, ni los relatos ni tan siquiera la escritura, no le veo el punto al autor para tanta fama que tiene!
No me ha gustado nada, ni los relatos ni tan siquiera la escritura, no le veo el punto al autor para tanta fama que tiene!
December 26, 2021
"Memory Wall" von Anthony Doerr habe ich auch im Rahmen der Buchclub-Wanderbuch-Aktion gelesen und es war ein Buch, f¨¹r das ich doch mehr Zeit brauchte, da es in eine Tiefe ging, die mich viel zum Nachdenken brachte.
Eine interessante, tiefe Geschichte, die mir insgesamt gut gefallen hat!
Eine interessante, tiefe Geschichte, die mir insgesamt gut gefallen hat!
September 27, 2010
Disappointed in this book, and it came so highly recommended! :) I do have to say that his writing style is nice, I enjoy the simplicity and also the depth with his careful word choice. For my tastes, the style is slightly too abrubt, but just as I said, that is just my taste. He did a good job at making these characters come alive and without actually saying but showing exactly what they feel. I was disappointed though with the lack of direction that the stories seem to take. The only direction seems to be revealing more about the lives of these people (which is done well) but I keep finding myself asking, "Whats the point?" I get the theme of memories, but I don't feel he's saying anything new that I didn't know before opening the book. I feel he's taken an in depth look at these character's lives, but not into memories. That being the case, I would rather have some conclusion of their lives and struggles we experience with them than leaving all the strings untied at the end.
September 28, 2023
He leido este libro en una lectura conjunta, lo m¨¢s probable es que yo nunca hubiese leido este libro si no fuese por eso, ya que no es un libro que me llamase la atenci¨®n.
Este es un libro de relatos, los cuales tratan sobre el olvido, la memoria y los recuerdos de diversas formas, me han parecido relatos llenos de tristeza y melancol¨ªa, la narrativa del autor es bastante buena y hace que se lean f¨¢cil, pero algunos relatos se me han hecho algo lentos y aburridos.
Entre los relatos que menos me han gustado est¨¢n, Procrear, generar y el que da el t¨ªtulo al libro El muro de la memoria, este ¨²ltimo tiene parte de ciencia ficci¨®n en su trama y me ha parecido bastante raro.
Y entre los que m¨¢s me han gustado est¨¢n La zona desmilitarizada, R¨ªo Niemen y El m¨¢s all¨¢, este ¨²ltimo es el que m¨¢s me ha gustado de todos, seguramente sea porque la tem¨¢tica del relato, me interesa bastante y suelo leer novelas sobre ese tema.
Este es un libro de relatos, los cuales tratan sobre el olvido, la memoria y los recuerdos de diversas formas, me han parecido relatos llenos de tristeza y melancol¨ªa, la narrativa del autor es bastante buena y hace que se lean f¨¢cil, pero algunos relatos se me han hecho algo lentos y aburridos.
Entre los relatos que menos me han gustado est¨¢n, Procrear, generar y el que da el t¨ªtulo al libro El muro de la memoria, este ¨²ltimo tiene parte de ciencia ficci¨®n en su trama y me ha parecido bastante raro.
Y entre los que m¨¢s me han gustado est¨¢n La zona desmilitarizada, R¨ªo Niemen y El m¨¢s all¨¢, este ¨²ltimo es el que m¨¢s me ha gustado de todos, seguramente sea porque la tem¨¢tica del relato, me interesa bastante y suelo leer novelas sobre ese tema.
March 18, 2021
Hace tiempo que compr¨¦ este libro tras leer y disfrutar "La luz que no puedes ver", pero hasta ahora no hab¨ªa encontrado la ocasi¨®n. Esta vez coincidi¨® que fue el libro elegido para una lectura conjunta en tem¨¢tica ciencia ficci¨®n.
Lo primero, no es ciencia-ficci¨®n, aunque parte de la historia del primer relato lo sea. Es m¨¢s bien narrativa, en forma de relatos cortos, independientes, pero todos con un hilo conductor: la memoria o la falta de ella, las ganas de vivir, el dolor de la p¨¦rdida.
Son relatos que te hacen reflexionar, con toque de drama (ni uno se salva de ese halo de tristeza). Un buen libro que sin embargo me ha resultado en momentos aburrido, un tanto surrealista en alg¨²n relato.
Lo primero, no es ciencia-ficci¨®n, aunque parte de la historia del primer relato lo sea. Es m¨¢s bien narrativa, en forma de relatos cortos, independientes, pero todos con un hilo conductor: la memoria o la falta de ella, las ganas de vivir, el dolor de la p¨¦rdida.
Son relatos que te hacen reflexionar, con toque de drama (ni uno se salva de ese halo de tristeza). Un buen libro que sin embargo me ha resultado en momentos aburrido, un tanto surrealista en alg¨²n relato.
October 19, 2022
i hate that i rated this 3 stars because anthony doerr is one of my absolute favorite authors, but this wasn't nearly as amazing as his other books. he's written novels and short stories really really well, but this book had mid-length stories with odd pacing, and they all felt really long, even if they weren't. it was definitely a good book, and i enjoyed reading some of the stories! just not as much as his other works!
my favorites in this book were afterworld, memory wall, and village 113, and i loved that this book had a common theme throughout the stories of memory and legacy.
my favorites in this book were afterworld, memory wall, and village 113, and i loved that this book had a common theme throughout the stories of memory and legacy.
February 23, 2023
If you'd like your heart to be broken, not once but six times, read this collection of short stories from Anthony Doerr. They are poignant, beautiful, haunting and some of the best writing I've ever come across. Each deals with memory--what makes memories, what happens when we lose memories, what happens as we create them, do we pass them on to others, etc.
Which I find to be a very tender topic in this day and age when so many of our seniors are dealing with memory issues.
Do I highly recommend it?
Well, yeah. If you want your heart broken.
Or if you'd like to simply be immersed in a very good short story.
Which I find to be a very tender topic in this day and age when so many of our seniors are dealing with memory issues.
Do I highly recommend it?
Well, yeah. If you want your heart broken.
Or if you'd like to simply be immersed in a very good short story.
April 19, 2020
Mooie verhalen over de kracht van herinneringen.
Hebben een serieuze impressie achtergelaten op mijn gemoed.
Hebben een serieuze impressie achtergelaten op mijn gemoed.
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