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Shark Girls
Fiction. SHARK GIRLS is about two women whose lives are transformed by a shark attack that amputates a child's leg. It is narrated by "Scat," the older sister of the victim, now a reformed drunk and a "disaster photographer," alternating with the story of "Gracie," a casualty of a disfiguring accident, who becomes obsessed with "Shark Girl," as the younger sister is known, rumored to have supernatural powers, who at the start of the novel has disappeared.
- GenresFiction
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 25, 2014
Set in Hawaii and Maine, Wriston Colbert's novel is a story of accident, coincidence and fate; of the damage people do to themselves and others; of wanting to be left alone and wanting to be found. The story centers on Willa Beever, an 8-year-old girl who loses a leg in a shark attack. Willa also loses her voice -- or gives it up -- and so pieces of her story are told by her sister, Susan Catherine, or Scat, and Gracie McKneely, herself disfigured in a childhood accident, who ends up living in Willa's former room in a boardinghouse in Maine.
Wriston Colbert can be a mesmerizing writer, building waves of description and pure emotion that carry the story. At times, the syntax of sentences dissolves entirely, and the prose nearly becomes stream-of-consciousness. I would have been more willing to be swept along on this tide if the book didn't have so many errors of spelling, grammar and punctuation; the lack of attention made me wonder too often which choices were deliberate, and which merely sloppy. I was drawn by Gracie's story but, after the early chapters, found Scat more elusive. The novel's attention to physical beauty or its lack borders on obsession -- this character is described as plain, that one fat, another beautiful but despairing. The women suffer, barely able to cope with the world; the men are passive and distant. Yet I found nearly all of them sympathetic.
More often lately, I reflect on a book not in terms of its technical achievement but on whether the world created by the author is one I want to spend time in, whether its voice is original and gives me a new perspective. "Shark Girls" badly deserves a professional copy editor, and there are times when the story nearly falls apart, but it is more memorable and compassionate and compelling than many of the critically acclaimed books I've read this year.
There are two passages from the book, both from the final chapters, that I'll include here because I want to remember them:
"Remembering this now I think about another ocean, the one in Gracie's dreams as she described them to me, blue as breath, luminous, bluster of the surf the sun beating down, all vibration and sensation. Is this the moment when she understands, not our Gracie of the perceivable world but the other underneath, those three layers of skin? And how do I capture *this* in a photograph, save it as proof, label it, classify it, paste it into my Log: some knowledge of the world that isn't what most of us know; a door we dare not open, a place that may not take us in."
"Is it a dream? You will ask yourself this, must ask it as it seems like your eyes are open and you're seeing yourself sitting upright and forward on a sun-warmed rock the way the hala tree bends over the cliff, leaning into the wind, the sea, oldest of stories, watchful and thorny, trusting its roots because what else is there? At the place where a strip of sand meets a surging sea, watch what suddenly appears; watch her walk to the end of the point, such grace, possession of this land, this ocean her fluid and sinewy movements. Though she isn't really walking, couldn't be walking as it appears she has just one appendage, maybe a leg, but more like a fin, shivery play of the light, a fish's fin, long and metallic, body and tail. Hair hanging golden to her waist, eyes the color of the sea, shimmering gunmetal scales, long graceful curving of a fish. Her voice (is it a voice? resonate as wind, as breath): Would you like to swim with my friends? Ten of them, their fins dark and precise, cutting the water like so many knives. And with that the fish-woman arches her splendid shape and leaps. As she pivots, her projectile straight into the ocean, see the long curve of thigh, her muscled lower calf, the arched foot. Now there are eleven and the new one rising up through the luminescent sea so light and fine it appears almost translucent in the setting sun."
Wriston Colbert can be a mesmerizing writer, building waves of description and pure emotion that carry the story. At times, the syntax of sentences dissolves entirely, and the prose nearly becomes stream-of-consciousness. I would have been more willing to be swept along on this tide if the book didn't have so many errors of spelling, grammar and punctuation; the lack of attention made me wonder too often which choices were deliberate, and which merely sloppy. I was drawn by Gracie's story but, after the early chapters, found Scat more elusive. The novel's attention to physical beauty or its lack borders on obsession -- this character is described as plain, that one fat, another beautiful but despairing. The women suffer, barely able to cope with the world; the men are passive and distant. Yet I found nearly all of them sympathetic.
More often lately, I reflect on a book not in terms of its technical achievement but on whether the world created by the author is one I want to spend time in, whether its voice is original and gives me a new perspective. "Shark Girls" badly deserves a professional copy editor, and there are times when the story nearly falls apart, but it is more memorable and compassionate and compelling than many of the critically acclaimed books I've read this year.
There are two passages from the book, both from the final chapters, that I'll include here because I want to remember them:
"Remembering this now I think about another ocean, the one in Gracie's dreams as she described them to me, blue as breath, luminous, bluster of the surf the sun beating down, all vibration and sensation. Is this the moment when she understands, not our Gracie of the perceivable world but the other underneath, those three layers of skin? And how do I capture *this* in a photograph, save it as proof, label it, classify it, paste it into my Log: some knowledge of the world that isn't what most of us know; a door we dare not open, a place that may not take us in."
"Is it a dream? You will ask yourself this, must ask it as it seems like your eyes are open and you're seeing yourself sitting upright and forward on a sun-warmed rock the way the hala tree bends over the cliff, leaning into the wind, the sea, oldest of stories, watchful and thorny, trusting its roots because what else is there? At the place where a strip of sand meets a surging sea, watch what suddenly appears; watch her walk to the end of the point, such grace, possession of this land, this ocean her fluid and sinewy movements. Though she isn't really walking, couldn't be walking as it appears she has just one appendage, maybe a leg, but more like a fin, shivery play of the light, a fish's fin, long and metallic, body and tail. Hair hanging golden to her waist, eyes the color of the sea, shimmering gunmetal scales, long graceful curving of a fish. Her voice (is it a voice? resonate as wind, as breath): Would you like to swim with my friends? Ten of them, their fins dark and precise, cutting the water like so many knives. And with that the fish-woman arches her splendid shape and leaps. As she pivots, her projectile straight into the ocean, see the long curve of thigh, her muscled lower calf, the arched foot. Now there are eleven and the new one rising up through the luminescent sea so light and fine it appears almost translucent in the setting sun."
February 5, 2010
Shark Girls presents the reader with something horrific, and turns it into something humane. When a shark attacks 8-year-old Willa, her older sister Scat realizes that their lives are about to shift. At school, Scat becomes the one made fun of, because her peers don’t know what to do with the traumatic situation, but they know it would be mean to make fun of the victim of a shark attack. They have to place their confused and scared feelings somewhere, and so Scat becomes the bearer of their vulnerabilities.
As the sisters age, they both respond to the traumatic event in their own ways. Scat becomes a photographer of disasters and a pretty good drunk. Willa becomes more of a mythological force in the novel, as the media and her community label her “Shark Girl,” and believe that she has supernatural powers. While Willa and the shark attack are central to the story, the novel becomes more of a story about dealing with trauma, and learning how it affects all areas of our lives. Disability and the physicality of bodies is beautifully wrestled with throughout all of Shark Girls, as they create visual reminders of tough emotional realities.
While the aftermath of the shark attack is the main setting to this novel, there is a cursory character development in the story that intrigued me. The girls’ mother, Jaycee, is a woman of her own actions. She has her children call her “Jaycee” because her name is not and never will be “Mom.” After giving birth to each one of her three children, Jaycee allowed herself the space to feel depressed, and didn’t push herself to be a mother until the wave of postpartum depression rolled over her. Jaycee comes off as being harsh and possibly uncaring, but I think there is also something be said here about how a woman can choose her life even in the face of motherhood. How much should a mother have to sacrifice her own identity in order to be viewed as a “good” mother?
Feminism is slowly making its move into the lives of these characters, but in the mix of trying to figure out what that means, the shark attack occurs and finding identity takes on a new path. Shark Girls reminds us that we haunted by our own pasts. But more than a story of personal ghosts and tragedy, we are reminded that the fragility of our bodies can become something to be in awe of, something we can be frightened of, and something we can try and forget in order to keep on living. Either path we choose, however, is a path that will always lead back to where we came from.
Review by Chelsey Clammer
As the sisters age, they both respond to the traumatic event in their own ways. Scat becomes a photographer of disasters and a pretty good drunk. Willa becomes more of a mythological force in the novel, as the media and her community label her “Shark Girl,” and believe that she has supernatural powers. While Willa and the shark attack are central to the story, the novel becomes more of a story about dealing with trauma, and learning how it affects all areas of our lives. Disability and the physicality of bodies is beautifully wrestled with throughout all of Shark Girls, as they create visual reminders of tough emotional realities.
While the aftermath of the shark attack is the main setting to this novel, there is a cursory character development in the story that intrigued me. The girls’ mother, Jaycee, is a woman of her own actions. She has her children call her “Jaycee” because her name is not and never will be “Mom.” After giving birth to each one of her three children, Jaycee allowed herself the space to feel depressed, and didn’t push herself to be a mother until the wave of postpartum depression rolled over her. Jaycee comes off as being harsh and possibly uncaring, but I think there is also something be said here about how a woman can choose her life even in the face of motherhood. How much should a mother have to sacrifice her own identity in order to be viewed as a “good” mother?
Feminism is slowly making its move into the lives of these characters, but in the mix of trying to figure out what that means, the shark attack occurs and finding identity takes on a new path. Shark Girls reminds us that we haunted by our own pasts. But more than a story of personal ghosts and tragedy, we are reminded that the fragility of our bodies can become something to be in awe of, something we can be frightened of, and something we can try and forget in order to keep on living. Either path we choose, however, is a path that will always lead back to where we came from.
Review by Chelsey Clammer
April 6, 2011
You know, sometimes literary cleverness just leaves me cold. I had such great hopes for this book, and for the most part did like it, but I'm still not really sure what the point was. The main characters of the book, Scat and Gracie, are vctims of tragedies at very young ages. Each girl struggles against the ensuing events of her life, to what point I'm not sure. Nothing is completed, nothing justified, just endless misery punctuated by the occasional "win" to hint what life could be. The writing style of the author is mostly a distraction, and I found it very hard to get this story to carry me away.
May 8, 2010
Hawaiian mythology, sex, miracles, and sharks - what's not to like? Colbert weaves together the lives of two women affected by physical disabilities. One is the sister of a girl whose leg was bitten off by s shark, the other was dropped on a grill as a baby, leaving her with disfiguring burn scars. The implications of these two accidents are far-reaching, changing the victims' lives and ripping apart families. Colbert's prose is lively and original. This is a strange, beautiful book.
February 9, 2011
This the story of two sisters living in Hawaii, which is why I picked this book up I love Hawaii, and they're lives after a shark attack. Interesting and complex, more of a chick story , but a good read none the less. Will have to check into the authors other books.
January 14, 2016
Dazzling! A super book with a story so different - I've not ever read anything like it & had no idea what might happen next. I loved the author's style of writing; lyrical, sensuous. What a surprise as I picked it off the library shelf purely based on the title & cover art!
November 11, 2009
Great fiction that tells the truth of female human experience in our time. Unlike "chick lit" which tells us what we want to hear, this gets inside what we are. A gifted writer.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews