Shark Heart: A Love Story

“My failure as an artist led me to you,

with your bird wrists, twig fingers,

you, with your efficient days making lists

researching

you, who can make a spreadsheet about almost anything.

You make everything better than when you found it,

even me.”

The opening scene of the book includes first-person verse, whereas the body of the text primarily uses third-person prose. Habeck thus cultivates an intimate tone in these first passages, as Lewis utters confessions of love to Wren, which readers are almost immediately distanced from when the work switches to third-person narration. Shark Heart is filled with instances of formal juxtaposition like this opening example. The structuring of the opening dialogue as a “scene” also establishes the theme of Life as Metatheater.

“Lewis often told his students that living itself could be an art form. So it made sense that his life, as their teacher, would be a demonstration of this principle. If this was Act One, Lewis still had control. He could still direct his own story. What happened after intermission would be in nature and God’s hands, if there was a god. And if there wasn’t, Lewis would blame life, the chaos, the living drama.”

Lewis’s conviction in life as metatheater is established early in the book. This ethos informs both the shape of the plot, determining Lewis’s actions, and also the form of the text itself, which is interspersed with theatrical passages and conforms to a three-act structure.

“Beyond the spheres of light cast by streetlamps, Wren saw raccoons, opossums, skunks, and stray cats. Once, she saw a fox prowling across front lawns. Twice, a coyote bolted the moment it saw her. After these sightings, Wren caught her mind wandering, wondering what it would be like to be an animal with such uncomplicated, reasonable fears.”

The connection that Wren feels to the natural world, in particular the animal world, is a thread throughout the entire book. At times, other characters compare her to an animal. Here, she draws the same connection herself. Though readers are not aware at this point of Wren’s backstory, the reasons for this line of thinking become clear when it emerges that she grew up with a mutating mother.