The Shell Collector: Stories garnered a remarkable number of awards and was similarly well-received by reviewers. Called a “skillful first collection,” in the New York Times Book Review, the book was praised in Library Journal for its characters that “are limned by the things around them.” Library Journal compliments Doerr for his “subtle linguistic self-consciousness [and] fluid and eddying plots.” A reviewer for Publishers Weekly adds that “Nature, in these eight stories, is mysterious and deadly, a wonder of design and of nearly overwhelming power.” The Publishers Weekly reviewer notes too that this “delicate balance” is sustained in the title story about the discovery of a poisonous snail that can both “kill and . . . effect a rapid recovery from malaria.” The attention that this event brings to the protagonist, the reviewer writes, disrupts “the carefully ordered universe that he has constructed to manage both his blindness and his temperament.” Also commenting on the title story, a reviewer in Kirkus Reviews points out that the collector’s accidental cure leads him to be “mistaken for a great healer.” The reviewer concludes that Doerr’s collection is “the best new book of short fiction since Andrea Barrett’s Ship Fever.”

Similarly impressed was Tim Appelo, writing for Seattle Weekly. Appelo begins his review by stating, “It’s easy to see why Anthony Doerr was crowned king of last year’s literary debutants, showered with cash and raves by the NEA, the Times of New York, L.A., and Seattle, the O. Henry and New York Public Library Young Lions Awards, and Entertainment Weekly.” This is a different brand of writing, Appelo explains: “Instead of trendily transgressive coming-of-age-as-a-cool-kid-like-me tales, [Doerr] gives us a whirlwind tour of the world.” Comparing Doerr to one of the greatest American naturalists, Henry David Thoreau, Appelo asserts that Doerr reels “in nature imagery with the deft hand of a poet and the eye of a mystic.” Appelo criticizes the “plotting” and thinks Doerr can be “too pat,” but he still concludes, “his fiction is an exotic specimen well worth collecting.”