Shark Heart Broke Me

A love story featuring a main character named Wren whose husband has a genetic condition that is transforming him into a great white shark. When I first saw this novel in the available selections from Book of the Month, I was thinking “no way!” and “sign me up!” at the same time. Since I’m reviewing it now, you know how that story turned out.

Debut author Emily Haback’s surreal story is hard to describe, but I keep trying to tell people about it anyway because it is just that good. To begin with, the material is unlike anything most of us have encountered since Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The lack of adherence to the unexpected and conventional doesn’t stop there though. Haback who has a background in playwriting breaks her prose into scenes like the script from a play in spots. Other parts of the novel almost read more like a novel in verse than your typical novel. I don’t like being the person who dwells on formatting as one of the things that stands out in a book because anyone flipping through a copy can spot that and it’s not the most important thing. (By the way, in case you haven’t already caught on, the content is even weirder. I know you know it’s weird, but take whatever you have in mind and multiply it by ten for a close approximation.)

Here’s the thing though: Shark Heart is experimental, but it’s also warm, funny, heartbreaking, and compulsively readable. How? I don’t know. I kind of wanted to hate it and in some ways I hate Haback because I don’t think I could ever pull something like this off myself, but it’s beautiful. The prose is beautiful and the story is beautiful (and bizarre.) Also, I won’t spoil it, but the ending sent me into one of the best happy-sads I’ve ever been in. I’m grateful that I didn’t turn into a puddle of tears and snot like I did after I finished Sweethearts by Sara Zarr. I mean, I love it when a book makes me sob, but I read Shark Heart in a tent at a campground near Grand Lake because that’s just the way to read weird books.