Clam Down: A Metamorphosis

Novelist and Columbia University creative writing professor Chen (So Many Olympic Exertions) serves up an offbeat memoir inspired by her mother’s habitual misspelling of “calm down” as “clam down” in text messages. After the end of Chen’s marriage, her mother’s inadvertent typo prompted introspection about Chen’s tendencies to retreat, self-protect, and stay silent. “Was becoming a clam a kind of wish fulfillment, or was it a curse that prevented her from acting out, from getting angry,” Chen wonders (she refers to herself in the third person as “the clam” throughout). To better understand the clam as a symbol, Chen weaves in scientific research and analyzes literary and artistic depictions of mollusks in works including Italo Calvino’s Comsicomics and painter Hubbard Lathard Fordham’s Portrait of Shellfish. Along the way, she confronts the cracks in her marriage and considers what timidity she may have inherited from her father, who disappeared for 10 years during Chen’s childhood to develop a software in Tawain called Shell Computing. Chen’s surreal tone and dry humor (“Whether there were certain aspects of clamhood that would render her unfit for modern life: that was still to be seen”) elevate this above similar tales of self-discovery. For readers willing to take the plunge, it’s a treat. Agent: Amelia Atlas, CAA. (June)