Clam Down

A Metamorphosis

De: Anelise Chen

Narrado por: Anelise Chen

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 life—a 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

We’ve all heard the story about waking up as a cockroach—but 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 down”—to retreat, hide, close up, and stay silent. Idiomatically, we are said to “clam up” when we can’t 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?

©2025 Anelise Chen (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“After Chen splits with her husband, an older man she had been with since her early 20s, her mother sends her repeated texts urging her to ‘clam down.’ In response, Chen realizes—à la Gregor Samsa—that she is a clam, and she decides her clamped-shut mollusk nature could explain everything.”—Vulture

“A dreamlike, albeit carefully studied, tale exploring introversion, hardening one’s exterior as a means of self-protection and reliance . . . The layering transforms this unusual memoir into a palimpsest. . . . A poignant and wholly original memoir of liberation through confinement.”— Kirkus Reviews

“Chen’s surreal tone and dry humor . . . elevate this above similar tales of self-discovery. For readers willing to take the plunge, it’s a treat.”—Publishers Weekly

“Chen’s genre-defying memoir turns her mother’s innocent typo—an exhortation to ‘clam down’—into an investigation of her own ‘clam genealogy’—that is, the family history and forces that led her to retreat into her shell following a divorce—as well as what we can learn from those most cloistered of sea creatures.”—The Millions