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Shark Heart: 'A fantastical, original and beautifully written novel' ANTHONY DOERR
Emily Habeck
Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Fantasy, Fantasy romance, Romance
An emotional exploration of motherhood, marriage, transformation, and letting go, Shark Heart is an unforgettable love story that examines what it truly means to be human.
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's turning into a great white shark, and has less than a year left to live as a human. At first, Wren resists her husband's fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis fully transforms?
'Every page bursts with heart' Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See
But as Lewis changes, day by day, Wren begins to make peace with the inevitable. After all, this isn't the first time she's lost a loved one.
An extraordinary novel of love, loss, hope and happiness, Shark Heart explores the shapes that love takes, in all its many forms, and asks us to ask ourselves: what makes us human?
Praise for Shark Heart: 'A fantastical, original and beautifully written novel' ANTHONY DOERR
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Beautifully written, full of gorgeous observation and invention, extremely readable. Wonderful sentences. I loved the notion of Angela, feeling desire stirring again, remembering what it was like being a little girl waiting for Christmas, "each hour of December passing through a tunnel of strained, anticipatory patience". The descriptions of Lewis's experiences when he goes full shark, swimming, feeding, are brilliantly vivid, with a balance of the specificities of the transformation (the adaptations to the necessities of the new body, taking the metaphor seriously) and the emotional eloquence - Adam Roberts, author of Stone
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Compelling, moving, lyrical - Claire North, author of Ithaca
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Shark Heart is a fantastical, original, and beautifully-written novel of abandonment, love, and Ovidian transformation. It explores illness, caretaking, devotion, magical thinking, and loss-and of course great white sharks-in ways that are funny, sad, and surprising. Every page bursts with heart. - Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See
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Shark Heart is one of those rare books that reaches right into you and reflects lived experience so exactly, and so poetically, that it feels like you're being seen. It wears its heart openly and unapologetically on its sleeve. Equal parts tenderly comedic and tragic, the book was a difficult one to read, but I'm so glad I did - Marianne Gordon, author of The Gilded Crown
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Shark Heart doesn't shy from life's most agonizing truths-death and release, the torture that comes with sudden and unexpected freedom. But, with great tenderness, Emily Habeck reminds us how life demands that we give into momentum: we adapt and we accept. I suspect that I will read this book over and over and receive a profound lesson each time. Even as it is rich with fantasy, it felt more real than anything I've read in years. - Mary Louise Parker, author of Dear Mr You
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