Shark Heart by Emily Habeck – 416 pages
ARC from Mary Sue Ricci books and Netgalley for an honest review
Book Blurb:
For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will gradually turn into a great white shark. As Lewis develops the features and impulses of one of the most predatory creatures in the ocean, his complicated artist’s heart struggles to make peace with his unfulfilled dreams.
At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with a college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds. Woven throughout this bold novel is the story of Wren’s mother, Angela, who becomes pregnant with Wren at fifteen in an abusive relationship amidst her parents’ crumbling marriage. In the present, all of Wren’s grief eventually collides, and she is forced to make an impossible choice.
My Review: 5 stars
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck is one of the oddest and most beautiful stories I’ve read in a long time. This story requires suspension of belief and just rolling with where the author cleverly and masterfully takes you.
If you’ve read the blurb, then you know that a main character will mutate into a great white shark. Don’t let it shock you. In the unknown time period this book takes place, this is as normal as learning you have any other type of disease. What’s different is that a man transforming into shark will at some point not be able to live in the same habitat, and will soon see those he loves as, well, his next meal.
Beyond the achingly creative plot is the incredible way the book was told. With some pages having only a sentence, and other pages fully filled with text, there was a lyrical and poetic cadence to the writing. I wonder if this comes across in the audio version. Let me know if you’ve listened to it.
There were so many fantastic lines about love, life, grief, moving on, forgiveness, hope and mother/daughter relationships that my book was marked, folded (yikes!), tabbed and written in to savor the quotes later. Side note: I do believe that this book will be a love it or hate it. For those who don’t want to believe in alternate realities or magical realism, this may not be for you. But for anyone who wants an evocative and entirely fresh story, definitely pick this one up.
Quotes I liked:
Were they meant only to share a moment and pass on, alone, taking opposite forks on the road into womanhood.
“Lewis’s mutation was like weather; they could prepare, but they could not control a thing.”
“…joy and grief are human birthrights.”
“Didn’t ever learn the difference between loneliness and being alone.”
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