49 pages • 1 hour read
Emily HabeckShark Heart: A Love Story
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Epilogue Summary
Wren returns to her and Lewis’s home in Dallas and is reminded of him by the drawings of treehouses strewn about there. She also begins to read his manuscript, attempting to go through it slowly but finally giving up: “[O]ne night, after treating herself to two sentences, she binged the whole play. Wren was disgusted with herself and then devastated. His work could no longer be discovered. She had lost him all over again” (384). She realizes that she is pregnant with Lewis’s child. Seeking support, she reaches out to Tiny Pregnant Woman but discovers an online obituary that announces her former friend died in childbirth.
Wren decides to get an abortion but backs out of the appointment the night before, remembering that Lewis told her she would be a “wonderful mother” when they parted on the beach. Throughout the pregnancy, she longs for Lewis, and when she discovers the baby is a girl, she decides to name her Angela. After the birth, however, she makes the split-second decision to name the baby Joy.
As Joy begins to grow, Wren and Lewis’s parents see parts of his personality peeking through in the toddler. They feel his presence through her. Wren fears missing a single moment of motherhood; she admires Joy’s fearlessness, and “Wren realizes she has much to learn from her” (393). By the age of five, Joy is enamored with nature. She asks Wren if they can build a treehouse, and Wren is moved by how much Lewis would have loved to share these moments with them. By the age of eight, Joy begins asking questions about Lewis and even asks to go to the theater. For spring break when Joy is 10, Wren takes her to the beach in California where she and Lewis parted ways. Wren watches as a carefree Joy somersaults in the water.
Epilogue Analysis
Shark Heart’s Epilogue is much longer and narratively complex than is conventional—another example of the novel’s highly experimental form. If Part 3 of the book resolves Lewis’s story, the Epilogue resolves Wren’s. These two endings, different in tone and themes, reinforce the sense that Wren and Lewis’s worlds have diverged entirely. Whereas Part 3 was highly absurdist, reflecting the surreal quality of Lewis’s transformation, the Epilogue is highly realist, reflecting how Wren’s life remains anchored in the mundane world.
Many literary devices contribute to this realistic effect. For instance, the sequential passages that follow Joy’s childhood simulate the passage of time. They are brief glimpses into the extended process of Joy’s growth, reflecting Wren’s conviction that “she can’t look away for a moment […] She doesn’t want to miss a thing” (392). Each anecdote therefore reads as one of the many moments that Wren clings to. Moreover, the passing nature of these moments reminds readers that Wren’s relationship with Joy, just like the other Transient but Formative Female Relationships in the novel, is transient. In the novel’s final moment, Wren and Joy’s hands are separated by the choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean:
The small hand wants to pull away from her mother’s safe hold. The small, dear hand needs to swim, explore, love. The ocean cannot be contained; neither can love; neither can Joy. Wren loosens her grasp. It is so hard to let go (404-05).
The uncontrollable disconnection of their hands—facilitated by the very waves that separated Wren from Lewis—is emblematic of the novel’s broader exploration of how loss is an inherent part of change. The mutations are just one of the many changes that force people apart. Here, time is causing Joy to grow and pulling mother and daughter apart in the process. Habeck has said that the central question that motivated her to write Shark Heart was “Why is change so hard?” (“A Novel Idea 2024: Emily Habeck.” Deschutes Public Library, 2024). In this final moment of the story, Joy refutes the very premise, telling Wren, “It’s easy. See?” (405). Though the “easy” thing she is referring to is somersaulting, readers are intended to experience the double meaning of her words alongside Wren. For a character who begins her story clinging to stability and control, accepting the fluid, transient nature of motherhood (and life) marks the pinnacle of her character growth.
