“We finally have everything back from the lab. The diagnosis is very clear,” Dr. Ramirez said briskly to mask the gravity of what came next. “You’re in the early stages of a Carcharodon carcharias mutation.”
“Carcharo — What?”
. . .
“Carcharodon carcharias. Great white shark.”
As a debut novelist, all I can discover about Emily Habeck is that she has a BFA in Theatre from SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts and Masters Degrees from Vanderbilt Divinity School and Vanderbilt’s Peabody College; and that background is perfectly represented in Shark Heart. Nominally a story about relationships and letting go, this novel asks big questions about finding meaning in life, and especially through art and service to others. Written in a variety of styles — some sections read like a dramatic script, some are in iambic pentameter; some are lyrical and touching, some funny and a few sentences long — and set in a world where it’s just accepted that a person could suddenly start to mutate into an animal (which serves as a metaphor for really any illness or strain in a relationship), there’s a real feeling of Habeck throwing every idea she has at this novel. And that’s a double-edged sword: I found this novel to be charming and moving in its unrestrained scattershotting, but I also felt like it could have benefitted from some restraint; I would have liked this even more if it had been longer and more focussed (for example, either give us more on secondary characters like Rachel and George or leave them out of it), but that’s not to say that I wasn’t charmed and moved. There is much to like in Shark Heart, and I am intrigued to discover what Habeck might come up with next; rounding up to four stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
“This is something different. It’s a contemporary play with mythical undertones. I want it to have the kind of wise humanity that only time and hardship earn. I hope that anyone who reads it will feel immediately connected to the version of themselves that is most alive, ready, and strong.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s a love story about forging ahead while facing great and immediate change.”
Shark Heart opens on a love story: Lewis gave up on his dream of being a stage actor and returned from NYC to his hometown of Dallas to become a high school drama teacher, eventually meeting the woman of his dreams, Wren — a person of quiet beauty and self-control who works in finance because numbers are solid and predictable (unlike her childhood). After being together for a few years they decide to get married, but within weeks, Lewis notices changes in his body and is diagnosed with an “animal dementia”, the Carcharodon carcharias mutation. Habeck neatly handles this alt reality: Lewis expects to keep working his job (despite growing rows of razor teeth and succumbing to fits of uncontrollable rage), and while he understands that he will eventually need to be released into the ocean, he wants to spend his last few human months making art (directing and writing) and being in physical contact with the love of his life (even if that means sleeping together in a cold salt bath). Meanwhile, Wren is put in the position of uncomplaining caregiver; and while she is clear-eyed about her husband’s future, she has fantasies about not letting him go. This is an undeniably lovely romance.
As their saltwater tears combined with the sea, 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.
The plot goes back in time to the story of Wren’s mother, Angela: the neglected daughter of a crumbling marriage, I absolutely believed that at fifteen, she could be seduced by the first older houseboat-living hippie-philosopher who paid her any attention. Angela’s story leads into the story of Wren’s challenging childhood, and I’ll put my spoilery observation behind this warning: I loved how Wren’s experience in the present shows the playing out of intergenerational trauma: Angela’s mother had been a cold and narcissistic drunk, and although Angela had intended to be a much better mother herself, she was diagnosed with a slow-moving mutation that would eventually turn her into a komodo dragon — forcing Wren to become a caregiver to an increasingly forgetful, distant, and cold-blooded “monster” (much as Angela must have viewed her own mother; this animal mutation conceit is a great metaphorical tool).
Wren did not see her mother as a sick woman living within a body she no longer knew or controlled. Instead, she saw a pathetic, powerless beast surrounded by murder, a mess of blood and guts. As rage bubbled up and spilled over, Wren sharpened a pernicious, worded arrow and lobbed it at the bull’s-eye, her mother.
“You are a monster.”
Her mother’s face and head fell in succession.
“I know,” Angela whispered. “I know. I am.”
The storyline eventually spools out into Wren’s future and shows what she has learned from her experiences:
She considers how life is like a spiraling trail up a mountain. Each circling lap represents a learning cycle, the same lesson at a slightly higher elevation. Wren realizes she likes to rest as much as she likes to climb. She begins to enjoy the view…Afterward, Wren realizes she herself is the mountain she’s been climbing all along.
And so maybe the ending is a little tidy, and maybe all the changing formats is a little gimmicky, but there is heart and meaning here and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
