Shark Girl - Kelly Bingham

THIS was a really great book!!!! It was intense and powerful, funny and also quite poignant. I loved it.

The story is about Jane Arrowood, a fifteen year old girl who goes swimming in the ocean one day, like she's done hundreds of times before, only this time she's unfortunately attacked by a shark and loses her right arm. Readers travel with Jane as she journeys through the difficult territory of her recovery and re-entry into the regular world as someone who feels anything but normal.

What I really love about this story, though, is the way it's told. The author weaves together poetry, phone conversations, newspaper articles, and letters to tell Jane's story. I think all the different perspectives/methods make the story that much more powerful. There's so much punch packed into the spareness of it. Everything that's not said speaks as loudly as everything that is.

I really, really liked this book, but if you're someone who wants a straightforward narrative, you might not enjoy this as much. It would be an interesting pairing to read this together with Soul Surfer by Bethany Hamilton I think. She's the young surfer who lost her arm to a shark (for real) and then began surfing again.

Available at the WOMS library and Multnomah County.