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Would you still love me if I were a shark?

Author: Emily Habeck

Newlyweds Lewis and Wren dream of many things. Lewis, a failed actor and beloved teacher, still dreams that one day he will write the play to end all plays. And Wren, she dreams of never being abandoned again, of embracing someone who will stay. Both will have their hearts broken.

Lewis notices the changes at first and thinks nothing of them, but eventually he puts aside his avoidance and goes to the doctor. The diagnosis is stark. His body is, indeed, changing, and there is nothing they can do but ease the transition. By the time a year is out, Lewis will be a Great White Shark. It’s a dangerous transition and a rare one, and Lewis’ artist sensibilities must confront the bestial reality of his shift.

As her husband literarily morphs into a stranger, Wren confronts the limits of love. Can love between a woman and a shark be real? Can she find a way to hold on this time, to make this relationship last? She’s finally ready to stay with someone, just as they are preparing to leave her forever.

Shark Heart is undeniably weird. It’s serious, poetic, at times ludicrously funny, but somehow, it works. Now part of this was because I just wanted it to work, no doubt. You must be in a certain mind frame for this type of book, where magical realism warps around high-brow lyricism and that “literary” tang of artistic feeling and desolation. You have to be in the mood to accept the normality of a common disease where humans morph into animals – especially sharks, Komodo dragons, and later even birds.

Of course, it’s silly, really, but it’s so weird that we can’t stop. Will Lewis lose it and eat his rival, for instance? And Wren’s mother, this weird estrangement that is hinted at, is that a precursor to Wren’s inability to commit? And how exactly does a man become a shark, and what does a shark in the depths of the ocean with the mind, morals, and motives of a human even do? How far does this imagined world of talking ocean carnivores and women wedded to half-shark men go, and how far will we follow it? The answer: you’ll either go all the way or shut the book on page one and walk away. It’s a ride-or-die, an all-or-nothing. Either you go with it and love it or check out early and wonder just what exactly was in Emily Habeck’s water. Ok, maybe you wonder that either way.

What I enjoyed, beyond the sheer insanity of the plot, was the beauty of the writing and the way that it took this situation and created layers of meaning. The story is ultimately about letting go and moving on, about the things that we never get, the relationships that don’t make it, and the inability of anyone to really hold on forever. Wren loses her mother through change, and then loses her husband to the same thing. Lewis himself loses what he thinks means everything (his art, his career, his marriage) and yet survives and goes on to establish a new life (with a shark woman named Margaret C. Finnegan of all things.) It’s about our very human inability to hold on and to move on. For something so out there, the emotions are very basic to all humanity and very painful. It’s talking the “would you still love me if I were a worm” question and running with it all the way into a tragic, heartbreaking end.

Image by Sarah Richter from Pixabay

Of course, the book isn’t perfect. It’s a debut after all. Wren is a sort of non-character, a catalyst for her mother’s (far better) story. The back-in-time moments with Wren’s college girlfriend are also jarring. I suppose they show her capability to love, but incapability to commit until she meets Lewis. But do we really need this? Does it add anything?

What’s even more odd is Wren’s love of Lewis. In their relationship, she is a blank slate, a non-entity, a narcissist’s dream wife. Lewis teaches her culture, poetry, plans, etc. while she remains impersonal throughout. While Lewis has goals, has life, and has regrets, all Wren seems to have is him. One wonders if this is meant to be deeper. A warning about putting all your meaning into a person without having any personhood yourself? But I suspect not. I suspect it was an imperfect, dare I say incomplete characterization, which left Wren sidelined by the more powerful figure of the man-shark by her side.

Overall, Shark Heart charmed me. I bought it for the cover, honestly, and because I’m obsessed with sharks. I figured that I would find it uninspired, weird, too artsy for its own good, and it did have moments of artsy foppishness, to be sure, but above all, it had a poignancy and a pain that interfaced well with the eccentricity and gave it depth and meaning. It’s a surprisingly sad story, one that goes beyond the mere plot device of monstrous transformation to give some hope in the face of inevitable heartbreak, of love, of reliance, of humanity. Recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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