In this spare and beautifully-written novel in poems, Kelly Bingham captures the agony of loss and the triumph of the human spirit.  The book opens with Jane Arrowood, a southern California teen, in the UCLA Hospital following a shark attack that left her in a coma, and required the amputation of her right arm above the elbow.  Details of the attack emerge through flashbacks, interjected newspaper articles, and conversations with her family.  As Jane begins the two-steps-forward, one-step-back dance of recovery, readers walk with her, feeling her pain as she realizes her relationships are all changed, and her dream of being a professional artist is over.  Bingham prevents the novel from slipping into a morass of despair by introducing some bright spots into Jane's life: Justin, a young fellow amputee in the hospital; Mel, a kind therapist; and Max, the hottest guy in school, who shows Jane kindness.

One stroke of brilliance that impressed me was the author's effective use of letters from strangers as a way of revealing Jane's progress, anger, and turmoil.  The letters run the gamut of well-intended strangers to clueless kids doing school reports, but most of the letters are from people who have survived the loss of limbs and offer their experience and hope.  They all seem to understand their cliched words of comfort may not help at the moment, but they all try to share their methods of coping with their physical challenges, and in the end, Jane is able to experience their truths for herself.

If you've never read a novel that is told through a series of poems, this is a great introduction to this style of writing.  While typically lauded for their appeal to "reluctant readers" due to the large amount of white space on the page, novels in poems seem to me to be a distillation of a traditional novel -- all of the emotion, drama, and impact of prose condensed into a series of poems.  Shark Girl is haunting and real. 

As an aside, there may be some curiosity about this book's relationship to Bethany Hamilton, the girl in Hawaii who survived a shark attack while surfing.  Here is a link to an interview with Kelly Bingham that details her writing process.