Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
Clam Down
Clam Down: A Metamorphosis | Anelise Chen
5 posts | 2 read | 3 to read
In this wondrously unusual memoir, a woman retreats into her shell in the aftermath of her divorce, and must choose between the pleasures and the perils of a closed-up lifea transformation fable from an acclaimed 5 Under 35 National Book Foundation honoree. A marvel and a delight . . . This is a book that will stay with me forever.Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters Weve all heard the story about waking up as a cockroachbut what if a crisis turned you into a clam? After the dissolution of her marriage, a writer is transformed into a clam via typo after her mother keeps texting her to clam down. The funny if unhelpful command forces her to ask what it means to clam downto retreat, hide, close up, and stay silent. Idiomatically, we are said to clam up when we cant speak, and to come out of our shell when we reemerge, transformed. In order to understand her path, the clam digs into examples of others who have embraced lives of reclusiveness and extremity. Finally, she confronts her own clam genealogy to interview her dad, who disappeared for a decade to write a mysterious accounting software called Shell Computing. By excavating his past to better understand his decisions, she learns not only how to forgive him but also how to move on from her own wounds of abandonment and insecurity. Using a genre-defying structure and written in novelistic prose that draws from art, literature, and natural history, Anelise Chen unfolds a complex story of interspecies connectedness, in which humans learn lessons of adaptation and survival from their mollusk kin. While it makes sense in certain situations to retreat behind fortified walls, the choice to do so also exacts a price. What is the price of building up walls? How can one take them back down when they are no longer necessary?
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
blurb
monalyisha
post image

Clam Down was too singular to NOT win August.

The Wedding People also gets high honors…but not high enough to replace Eight Bears as the Wild Card.

…Bears, and clams, and Moomin. Oh my!

#ReadingBracket2025
#2025ReadingBracket

CSeydel Looking good! I always enjoy seeing your picks - you read such good books and often they are titles I haven‘t heard of elsewhere 6d
monalyisha Thanks, @CSeydel! Your comment made me smile. 😊 5d
46 likes2 comments
review
monalyisha
post image
Pickpick

At first, my feelings about this book were as inconstant as the tides: did I hate it? Did I like it? My opinion came in, and went out. I landed on glittering, phosphorescent love.

Chen says she‘s interested in form and it shows. Her memoir (?), in which she transforms into a clam in the aftermath of a divorce when her mother tells her via typo to “clam down,” is wholly unique. She writes about herself (“the clam”) in third person,…👇🏻

monalyisha 1/6: …from the POV of 5 different invasive Asian clams (over the course of time to show the history of Chinese immigrants in the American West), and as each of her Taiwanese immigrant parents *in the first person* (which she constructs from interview transcripts). (edited) 3w
monalyisha 2/6: Writing from your parents‘ perspective feels so…presumptuous? Transgressive, even. Obviously, we want to understand our parents. Just as obviously, they are unknowable. And (!), they are inside of us and they are us. We tell and retell ourselves their stories to help us form our own…but to put it down on paper feels more brave (or foolish?) than I would dare to be. 3w
monalyisha 3/6: I wonder if her parents have read her book. I wonder how they *really* feel about it (as I‘m sure the author does). 3w
See All 10 Comments
monalyisha 4/6: Over the course of the story, she journeys to shell-centric destinations, researching her surroundings. Some of my favorite explorations include Georgia O‘Keeffe‘s Ghost Ranch, Arcosanti, Biosphere2, and the Camino de Santiago. (edited) 3w
monalyisha 5/6: A word of caution: if you find yourself feeling skeptical about the narrative voice, keep going. In the initial sections, when she “clams up” and closes herself off, I *felt* it — which is impressive and effective! — but it didn‘t make for an enjoyable reading experience. Once she began diving into her relationship with her parents, I became much more invested. (edited) 3w
monalyisha 6/6: This is a strange book. Although it sometimes lacks smooth transitions between sections, I loved it for its inventiveness and the way it sprawls while, simultaneously, being intensely contained. (edited) 3w
mcctrish It sounds so interesting and intriguing 3w
monalyisha @mcctrish I‘ve never read anything quite like it! 3w
wildwoodreads I‘ve never read this but it sounds intriguing. Even though the title broke my brain for some reason lol 3w
monalyisha @wildwoodreads It‘s not a book that *doesn‘t* promise to break your brain…but I enjoyed it! 😜 3w
67 likes1 stack add10 comments
blurb
monalyisha
post image

You are what you eat.

Chrissyreadit 😂🥸😂 4w
Laughterhp My favorite 🤤🤤 4w
66 likes2 comments
review
everlocalwest
post image
Pickpick

Chen processes her divorce, the perceived failure of her early intellectual promise, and her father's professional downfall all through shell metaphors precipitated by her mother's mistyped directive to Clam Down. This experimental memoir is excellent; it's a meditation on ambition and legacy that's as innovative as it is profound. Chen weaves memoir, metaphor, history, just all of it. The soup of life is here (and it's a chowder).

26 likes1 stack add
blurb
RaeLovesToRead
post image

#two4tuesday @TheSpineView 😊

1) No idea! They just seem to keep arriving. Sometimes multiple copies. Someone yeeted the tagged book over my fence the other day. No recollection of ordering it! (Cool cover though)

2) Both. All the books. Probably preorder more standalones... a lot of the series' I'm reading have been completed and I'm working my way through already.

TheSpineView Don't you love book mail!!! ❤️📘📭 3mo
RaeLovesToRead @TheSpineView It's my fave thing! Although Amazon's technique on this one seemed to be just wang it in 🤣🤣 3mo
40 likes2 comments