Audiobook Review – How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler (2/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science/Memoir
Length: 5 hours and 41 minutes
Publisher:‎ Little, Brown & Company
Release Date: December 06, 2022
ASIN: B0B2BZGV4Z
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed Audiobook from Library
Rating: ?/5 stars

“A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature, including:

·the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her eggs,
·the Chinese sturgeon whose migration route has been decimated by pollution and dams,
·the bizarre, predatory Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena),
·the common goldfish that flourishes in the wild,
·and more.

Imbler discovers that some of the most radical models of family, community, and care can be found in the sea, from gelatinous chains that are both individual organisms and colonies of clones to deep-sea crabs that have no need for the sun, nourished instead by the chemicals and heat throbbing from the core of the Earth. Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age, How Far the Light Reaches is a shimmering, otherworldly debut that attunes us to new visions of our world and its miracles.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from the library..

Thoughts: While I understand what the author was doing here, I wasn’t a huge fan of it. Each chapter focuses on both a sea creature and on a pivotal point in the author’s life and draws comparisons between the sea creature and her own life. Early on in the book, this was intriguing, especially while the author is growing up.

Later in the book, I struggled with this as the author dives in to issues with drinking and blackouts and then with all her many girlfriends and struggling to figure out her sexuality. The chapter talking about the swarms and comparing that to the dyke scene in San Fran got especially lengthy.

My family and I got this book thinking it was a science book about sea creatures with some memoir of the author’s life woven in to it. There were some intriguing sea creature facts, but this book was way more weighed towards the author’s life than any sort of science. I really struggle to understand how this book won awards for science and technology. This imbalance got more noticeable as the book went on. Spoiler alert: This is really, really not a family book. My son is 17 and we were listening to it on a car trip, and he finally said “This lady is crazy and I am sick of hearing about all her weird drug use and sex” and he put his headphones on and listened to a different audiobook. My husband told me he was also not interested and asked if I would be okay just finishing it on my own (which I did because it was only five hours and I felt like I should finish it).

I had a lot of issues with the author talking about being blackout drunk and then waking up in strange places. I thought she should have emphasized that in these situations, both party members have a responsibility. Yes, men shouldn’t be taking advantage of women who are obviously under the influence. However, putting yourself in this situation night after night after night is also irresponsible of you. I am huge in to women’s rights and equality, but in these situations, you don’t know how under the influence the man is and don’t remember what you did or how you acted…so it’s hard to blame one party. The author admits this somewhat, but also seems to put the bulk of the blame on the men she woke up with the next morning.

There is a ton of talk about sexuality and sex. Some of that is fine, but that really became the sole focus of this book in the second half. For goodness sake, the author spends like fifteen minutes talking about how special it was for her to be able to purchase her own dildo and about how she shopped for it and all the variations she looked at. I didn’t really understand what a dissertation about dildos added to the story…it’s a dildo; a lot of people own them…moving on….

I am an engineer and scientist and hang around other engineers and scientists. I don’t know anyone who lives their life with this amount of drug use and reckless sexual abandon. It seemed like the author created a lot of unnecessary drama in her life. I know people like this and always struggle to understand why they do so many things to make their lives difficult and how anyone can have such poor impulse control. I assume I am just not the target audience for this book.

My Summary (2/5): Overall, by the end I just wanted this to be over. It was overly dramatic and boring, and I learned very little about sea creatures or any science at all. I think a good summary is that no one in my family could relate. The decisions the author makes throughout her life and the things she does are just so high drama and impulsive that none of us could understand them. Even my teenage son realized that. The book starts out okay but, as the story continues, it just gets too self-pretentious and loses any science bent it started with. This is one I wish I had never read. If you are looking for a book about sexuality you might find this intriguing, if you are looking to learn about the science behind sea creatures I strongly recommend looking elsewhere.