Just a few years ago, the wise ones predicted the collapse of good fiction in the wake of social media and streaming. They didn’t even imagine TikTok. Here in 2023, I found myself reading the best novel I have read since Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

From my perspective up here on the farm, publishing has been saved mostly by gifted women re-imagining fiction, taking risks, and brilliantly exploring the nature of life.

The latest is the first novel by Emily Habeck. It’s called Shart Heart, and it’s aptly named. It is a book of the heart.

I can’t imagine conceiving of a story so daring and inventive, and touching as this one.

I never could have thought of it and never could have written it. I am hooked like a fish on reading it.

I started last night, stopped reading this morning to work on the blog, and as soon as I put up a post or two, I’ll be back at it, perhaps through the night. I can’t wait to read another page.

Beyond Marquez, I can’t recall ever reading a book – as one critic put it –  as fantastical, original, and beautifully written. It is a daring book, yet a surprisingly soft book.

When I first heard of the book, I thought it was a horror story and planned to pass it by. Then I took a closer look. The story is unlike any other novel I know of.

It’s about a young couple- Lewis and Wren, married only one year and deeply in love, who are stunned to learn that Lewis has a dreadful mutant disease that will turn his body into that of a great white shark in a year or less. How could this narrative work, perhaps with a bit of jealousy at how behind me this idea is?

This could easily have been a disturbing book, but Habeck is a genius at making it palatable and uplifting.

This took a brave and confident writer to pull off, and I am one-third through the book and hate to put it down. I woke up at 3 a.m. and read for an hour or so. I’ve got to finish it, and I intend to this evening. I don’t want to say anything about it, except every page is genius. The book is funny at times, wise throughout, and affecting.

It is a love story, a subject that is not easy for a new or old writer to improve upon. It is a story of bravery as well. It is surprising.

Habeck has pulled this very difficult task off.

I love every page. She is writing about family and love; her book is an extraordinary exploration of illness, bravery,  caretaking, and devotion, broken and new dreams,  with some magical things and humor sprinkled in.

I’ve got two other books I have a great feeling about on the way, The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue, an Irish writer, and The Boys by Katie Hafner.

I do a lot of sniffing around at reviews and stories when I look for books, I’m always on the lookout for something special.  I keep coming across young and daring and beautifully written new books by young female writers starting. I am grateful to all of them; they keep the best parts of book writing alive.

I hate to think of modern-day publishing without these new writers, almost all women.

These last two books are on the way, I haven’t seen or read a page from either one of them (I did read some excerpts), so I won’t say anything more about them. I did want to pass the names of the books along for those of you who love reading. Fortunately, this applies to many of my blog readers.