A review by kirstiecat
Memory Wall, by Anthony Doerr
4.0
This is the first novel I have read by Anthony Doerr and I have to say that I really enjoyed his writing style. He has a really interesting sense of language and metaphor. This collection reminded me a little bit of Charles Baxter's Believers collection as it is really a novella and some other short stories. Both the novella and the short stories focus on memory and the way that memories are lost and found and affect everything else about our choices and the way we perceive the world. The characters that Doerr creates are very different and there are a great deal of solid contrasts but all of them struggle with this sense of their memories. I really enjoyed the first and longest story/novella that is also entitled "Memory Wall" but I think I liked the last short story Afterworld even more in which an older woman who was a Jewish orphan and an epileptic at the time of WWII in Germany continues to have seizures which involve visiting her previous memories from her life as a young girl. Still, Doerr brings something to the table with every story in the collection with an interesting range of personalities, plots, and settings.
I am definitely interested in reading another one of Doerr's novels after this, mainly because I can picture everything that Doerr writes about so clearly and also very vividly. He really has a great grasp on creating both a scene and the people who make it, for the readers, quite memorable.
Some quotes:
pg. 19 "Moments stretch; months vanish during a breath. He comes up gasping, as if he has been submerged under water; he feels catapulted back into his own mind."
pg. 35 "It's a museum arranged by a madwoman."
pg 42 "To say a person is a happy person or an unhappy person is ridiculous. We are a thousand different kinds of people every hour."
pg 57 "Parallelograms of morning light fall through the balcony doors."
pg. 104 "Nothingness is the permanent thing. Nothingness is the rule. Life is the exception."
pg. 113 "It was as if the city was entering his body and remaking it..."
pg. 133 "Stories, only stories. Not every story is seeded in truth. Still, she lies in bed and falls through the surfaces of nightmares. The river climbs the bedposts; water ours through the shutters She wakes choking."
pg. 145 "At night she walks the town and has the sense that the darkness is a great cool lake. Everything seems about to float away. Darkness, she thinks, is the permanent thing."
pg. 148 "Everything accumulates a terrible beauty"
pg. 150 "His voice is a whisper the hissing revolutions of needle across an old record."
pg. 151 "Maybe the river is already beginning to slack, to back up and rise. Maybe ghosts pour out of the Earth, out of the mouths of tombs up and down the gorges, out of the tips of twigs at the ends of branches. The fireflies tap against the glass. More than anything, she thinks, I'll be sad to see the speed go out of the water."
...
"What is a seed if not the purest kind of memory, a link to every generation that has gone before it?"
pg. 154 "The days seem made of twilight, immaterial as shadows. Memories, when they come, are often viscous and weak, trapped beneath distant surfaces, or caught in neurofibrillary tangles."
pg. 159 "And then I feel the Big Sadness coming on, like there's a shiny and sharp axe blade buried inside my chest. The only way I can stay alive is to remain absolutely motionless..."
pg. 170 "Sunlight explodes off of everything."
pg. 173 "When I was five I got an infection and Dr. Nasser put some drops in my eyes. Pretty soon all I could see were blurs and colors. Dad was a fog and Mom was a smudge and the world looked like it does when your eyes are full of tears."
...
"You come down the path and step through the willows and it's like seeing the lights in the world come back on."
pg. 180 "At the end the narrator says the tribe's old language has a word for standing in the rain looking at the back of a person you love. She says it has another word for shooting an arrow into an animal poorly, so that it hurts the animal more than is necessary. To call a person this world, in the old language, the lady says , is the worst sort of curse you could imagine."
pg. 181-182 "I think about how Grandpa Z says the sky is blue because it's dusty and octopuses can unscrew the top s off jars and starfish have eyes at the tips of their arms."
pg. 183 "Mishap goes quiet."
pg. 186 "The sturgeon we caught was...a big soft-boned hermit living at the bottom of a deep hole in a river that pours on and on like a green ghost through the fields of Lithuania. Is he an orphan like me?
...
"I pray for those South American tribespeople on the television and their vanishing language. I pray for the lonely sturgeon, a monster, a lunker, last elder of a dying nation, drowning in the bluest, deepest chambers of the River Nemunas."
pg. 187 "Saplings grow from ruptures in the street."
pg. 197 "When she opens her eyes, a crow is sitting on a branch just outside the window. It turns an eye toward her, cocks its head, blinks. Esther walks toward it, sets her palm against a plane. Does she see it? Just there? Something glowing between its feathers? Some other world folded inside this one?"
pg. 199 "There's no one?" "How can there be no one? The wind, washing across the cracked windows, carries the smell of seawater. The big empty house moans. The thistles creak."
pg. 209 "Draw the darkness, Esther thinks, and it will point out the light which has been in the paper all the while. Inside the world is folded another."
pg. 211 "The doctor says what you can see is only real in your head."
"Real in my head? whispers Esther. "Isn't everything that's real only real in our heads?"
pg. 242 "Every hour, Robert thinks, 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."
I am definitely interested in reading another one of Doerr's novels after this, mainly because I can picture everything that Doerr writes about so clearly and also very vividly. He really has a great grasp on creating both a scene and the people who make it, for the readers, quite memorable.
Some quotes:
pg. 19 "Moments stretch; months vanish during a breath. He comes up gasping, as if he has been submerged under water; he feels catapulted back into his own mind."
pg. 35 "It's a museum arranged by a madwoman."
pg 42 "To say a person is a happy person or an unhappy person is ridiculous. We are a thousand different kinds of people every hour."
pg 57 "Parallelograms of morning light fall through the balcony doors."
pg. 104 "Nothingness is the permanent thing. Nothingness is the rule. Life is the exception."
pg. 113 "It was as if the city was entering his body and remaking it..."
pg. 133 "Stories, only stories. Not every story is seeded in truth. Still, she lies in bed and falls through the surfaces of nightmares. The river climbs the bedposts; water ours through the shutters She wakes choking."
pg. 145 "At night she walks the town and has the sense that the darkness is a great cool lake. Everything seems about to float away. Darkness, she thinks, is the permanent thing."
pg. 148 "Everything accumulates a terrible beauty"
pg. 150 "His voice is a whisper the hissing revolutions of needle across an old record."
pg. 151 "Maybe the river is already beginning to slack, to back up and rise. Maybe ghosts pour out of the Earth, out of the mouths of tombs up and down the gorges, out of the tips of twigs at the ends of branches. The fireflies tap against the glass. More than anything, she thinks, I'll be sad to see the speed go out of the water."
...
"What is a seed if not the purest kind of memory, a link to every generation that has gone before it?"
pg. 154 "The days seem made of twilight, immaterial as shadows. Memories, when they come, are often viscous and weak, trapped beneath distant surfaces, or caught in neurofibrillary tangles."
pg. 159 "And then I feel the Big Sadness coming on, like there's a shiny and sharp axe blade buried inside my chest. The only way I can stay alive is to remain absolutely motionless..."
pg. 170 "Sunlight explodes off of everything."
pg. 173 "When I was five I got an infection and Dr. Nasser put some drops in my eyes. Pretty soon all I could see were blurs and colors. Dad was a fog and Mom was a smudge and the world looked like it does when your eyes are full of tears."
...
"You come down the path and step through the willows and it's like seeing the lights in the world come back on."
pg. 180 "At the end the narrator says the tribe's old language has a word for standing in the rain looking at the back of a person you love. She says it has another word for shooting an arrow into an animal poorly, so that it hurts the animal more than is necessary. To call a person this world, in the old language, the lady says , is the worst sort of curse you could imagine."
pg. 181-182 "I think about how Grandpa Z says the sky is blue because it's dusty and octopuses can unscrew the top s off jars and starfish have eyes at the tips of their arms."
pg. 183 "Mishap goes quiet."
pg. 186 "The sturgeon we caught was...a big soft-boned hermit living at the bottom of a deep hole in a river that pours on and on like a green ghost through the fields of Lithuania. Is he an orphan like me?
...
"I pray for those South American tribespeople on the television and their vanishing language. I pray for the lonely sturgeon, a monster, a lunker, last elder of a dying nation, drowning in the bluest, deepest chambers of the River Nemunas."
pg. 187 "Saplings grow from ruptures in the street."
pg. 197 "When she opens her eyes, a crow is sitting on a branch just outside the window. It turns an eye toward her, cocks its head, blinks. Esther walks toward it, sets her palm against a plane. Does she see it? Just there? Something glowing between its feathers? Some other world folded inside this one?"
pg. 199 "There's no one?" "How can there be no one? The wind, washing across the cracked windows, carries the smell of seawater. The big empty house moans. The thistles creak."
pg. 209 "Draw the darkness, Esther thinks, and it will point out the light which has been in the paper all the while. Inside the world is folded another."
pg. 211 "The doctor says what you can see is only real in your head."
"Real in my head? whispers Esther. "Isn't everything that's real only real in our heads?"
pg. 242 "Every hour, Robert thinks, 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."