A love story told through unbelievable circumstances
Book review: Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
Published: August 8, 2023 by Scribner
Buy this book at: Bookshop.org
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Synopsis:
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 transform into that of 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 fully transforms? 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 daring 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 meets her fears with surrender, choosing to love fully, now.
Rating:
Review:
This book was not at all what I expected it to be. It was weird, but also beautiful. It was thought-provoking and deeply sad. It was hopeful and shattering. It was familiar and entirely alien. The author took the hypothetical question, “Would you still love me if I were a worm?” and turned it into an entire world where people have genetic anomalies that transform them into animals. It’s so common that there are entire hospitals specialized in their care, along with laws that govern what must happen when a person is no longer sufficiently human or becomes potentially dangerous.
This is where we meet Wren and Lewis. They are newly married and enjoying their lives together when Lewis receives his devastating diagnosis. From there, we’re launched into a story about loving someone you will inevitably lose. They won’t be dead, but they won’t be human anymore. You’ll have to let them go and grieve their loss, knowing that their life continues as an animal without you. Wren is devastated because she went through this with her mother, who turned into a Komodo dragon when she was a girl. And so she does for Lewis what she did for her mother—she becomes his caretaker.
This book is an excruciating look at the toll that caretaking and terminal illness take on everyone in a family. We see the trauma and grief in an unflinching way. This book made me sob many times. It was heartbreaking. Wren struggles to be the strong one while Lewis deals with denial and anger over his diagnosis. Later, Lewis has a chance to be the strong one for Wren after he has accepted his fate, but she desperately wants to save him—or at least believe that someday there will be a cure and she can get her husband back. Their goodbye was one of the most emotional things I have ever read.
“Lewis finally understood the log line of their love story: He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but instead, he’d found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky.”
This book is highly recommended. It will likely be among my favorite books of the year.