Oceanic Transformations in Emily Habeck’s “Shark Heart” https://ift.tt/tHGlD94
In the past year, a lot of riveting sea-themed literature has emerged. Gina Chung’s Sea Change grapples with Millennial disgruntlement, the consequences of climate change, and the expanse of grief amid an unusual connection with a mutated Giant Pacific Octopus. Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures explores the meaning of family and friendship via the unlikely connection between a humble, modest aquarium janitor and a Giant Pacific Octopus named Marcellus. Meanwhile, epic nonfiction work Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures parallels the author’s own queerness and survival with a variety of fascinating marine creatures, including feral goldfish. Quietly establishing its own rightful, memorable place among them is Emily Habeck’s Shark Heart: A Love Story. In this raw, powerful, and delightfully unusual novel, readers meet Wren—a young, methodical woman whose life and first year of marriage are transformed when her husband, Lewis, is diagnosed with a rapidly progressive disease which transforms him into a great white shark.
Wren is a career-driven woman, bound by the numbers and accounting figures that dominate her life. Lewis is a dreamy theater teacher who sketches treehouses and whose public-school students do not quite understand his passion for his art. Despite their differences, the couple exists together happily. When Lewis initially receives his diagnosis, he hides it from Wren, but as his body develops fins and gills, and a shark’s sandpaper skin begins overtaking Lewis’s human flesh, he can no longer hide the gruesome reality from himself, Wren, his parents, or his colleagues and students. Wren, too, begins transforming. However, her transformation occurs emotionally, and readers learn that Wren’s past influences her responses to Lewis’s diagnosis. Thus, Shark Heart is not simply about dealing with a family member’s long-term, life-altering disability and illness. It also examines the painful, albeit unstoppable, emotional growth that occurs as an individual navigates the disasters which unfold in one’s life.
The novel’s plot and its characters are not simply tools for communicating this transformation. The novel itself is an experiment in transformation and reconfiguration. Its structure often mirrors its characters’ distinctive changes. For example, some chapters are brief and interlaced with scene changes structured as though they were taken from a play. Other chapters begin uniformly structured as paragraphs but then break into poetic stanzas which place emphasis on that character’s monologue or transformation. The emotional even physical breaks experienced by each character become visual experiences for readers as they encounter these changes in the text. These visualizations become especially important for readers as Lewis enters the final stage of his diagnosis—his full transfiguration into a great white shark which must be released into the wild ocean.
Shark Heart also presents a rather new take on an age-old literary theme—intergenerational trauma. First and foremost, it focuses on the female experience of coping with and overcoming intergenerational trauma. Wren can specifically identify the source of her own emotional issues. They stem from her mother, Angela, who as a teenager thrived in a well-to-do family. However, despite Angela’s family’s wealth and prominence, her distant mother suffered from depression and alcoholism; eventually Angela’s parents divorced. At fifteen, Angela finds herself pregnant and in an abusive relationship with the free-spirited and troubled Marcos. Angela’s experiences influence Wren and drive her to pursue a college education, a career with few disputable variables and economic stability, and a personal life which she can, for the most part, control. Wren achieves this control until Lewis’s diagnosis, which destabilizes her life and her career. Wren’s past trauma influences her response to her present ones. Her self-reflection about each trauma affects the decisions Wren makes as she supports Lewis.
Therefore, the novel develops an underlying social commentary and shifts its focus from trauma and response to another key element of existence—that of individual sacrifice, especially among caregivers who sacrifice their own careers, goals, and well-being in order to provide 24-hour assistance to ill family members. Caregivers have long been a steadfast presence in the American healthcare system. Rising healthcare costs have forced more and more Americans to transition into the role of in-home caregiver for ill or disabled family members. A recent study showed that around 31% of US adults served as a caregiver for an ill or disabled family member. Females comprise the majority of caregivers. Thus, Wren’s character and her experience serve as examples of the stark emotional, physical, and professional toll caregiving takes on caregivers. Because of Lewis’s condition, Wren must take a leave of absence. Her focus on self-care dwindles, and her social life becomes smaller and smaller as coworkers and friends more and more distance themselves from Wren and Lewis. Their isolation contributes to the couple’s metamorphosis, and their metamorphosis is so grotesquely unique that those outside of Wren and Lewis’s experience cannot emotionally, intellectually, or physically access it. Instead, the couple endure stares and judgements from outsiders, specifically Lewis’s colleagues, who shift their focus onto establishing a professional life sans Lewis.
Ultimately, Shark Heart is a novel about acceptance, grief, and letting go. It is structurally and lyrically daring, so much so that its pages quickly envelop readers in its emotional challenges and magic. In the realm of literature where authors often attempt to use the sea and its secrets to parallel a land dweller’s experiences, Shark Heart is an unforgettable standout presenting a new take on themes many authors have embraced and failed to articulate. While it begs readers to contemplate what it means to be human, it also challenges them to look at their circumstances carefully and reminds them to be grateful for what they have at hand rather than dwelling on what they may have lost. Shark Heart is an unforgettable and much needed love story for a new, uncertain, and rapidly changing era.
FICTION Shark Heart: A Love Story
By Emily Habeck
Simon & Schuster/ Marysue Ricci Books
Published August 8, 2023
0 Commentaires