Jaimee Wriston Colbert

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. 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.

Often, I reflect on a book in terms of 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" is more memorable and compassionate and compelling than many of the critically acclaimed books I've read this year.… (más)