HOW FAR THE LIGHT REACHES is one of those books that I feel like I’ve been hearing about for years, with other writers I admire extolling its praises online many months before its actual publication date. Needless to say, I was eager to get my own hands on Sabrina Imbler’s memoir (the subtitle of which is “A Life in Ten Sea Creatures”) to see what all the excitement was about. I am here to vouch that all the fuss was totally justified.

"Among the myriad strengths of this near-perfect volume is that Imbler permits readers to draw the parallels themselves, to find their own meaning in the overlaps between Imbler’s life and the lives of the creatures that swim through the book’s pages."

Imbler has made a name for themself with stunning pieces of science writing, both essays and reporting --- much of it focused on marine animals --- in such publications as the New York Times and The Atlantic. Here, Imbler builds on their long-standing fascination with the sea and their love of research (the bibliographic sources that close out the volume are impressive). Even if you think you know a lot about the natural world, Imbler gives readers reasons to wonder and marvel anew. Their writing is both deeply informed and profoundly compassionate, with their own sense of respect and wonder shining through nearly every sentence. Writing about the surprisingly short lifespan of the octopus, Imbler notes, “It seems a shame that an animal able to sense so much of the world occupies it so briefly, spends all of it at the bottom of the ocean, in darkness, at temperatures near freezing.”

HOW FAR THE LIGHT REACHES (which gets its title, as Imbler explains in the author’s note, from the vertical zones of the ocean) would be worth reading for their nature writing alone. But, as the subtitle suggests, this is also a memoir, although probably not like any other memoir you’ve encountered. Each elegantly crafted essay focuses on a single type of sea creature whose story is interwoven thematically with elements of Imbler’s own.

For example, in the opening essay (“If You Flush a Goldfish”), Imbler discusses the remarkable journeys of feral goldfish --- yes, those that have been flushed or otherwise abandoned and wound up in lakes, ponds and streams far from their original bowls and carnival plastic baggies --- and juxtaposes these oddities of nature with Imbler’s own experience of growing up and away from the exclusive high school where they never quite fit in. Imbler writes, “A dumped goldfish has no model for what a different and better life might look like, but it finds it anyway. I want to know what it feels like to be unthinkable too, to invent a future that no one expected of you.”

Imbler, who is queer and mixed-race, interrogates those aspects of their identity in other essays as well. In “Pure Life,” they write about the astonishing lives of creatures who live near hydrothermal vents at the ocean’s deepest points, creating lively communities clustered around heat sources and surrounded by deeply hostile environments. Likewise, in that same essay, Imbler recounts finding pure joy at a monthly dance party for queer folks of color in otherwise unfriendly Seattle. In “Hybrids,” they write about trying --- and largely failing --- to find mixed-race role models while growing up, as well as the somewhat troubling history of (largely white male) scientists and how they classified the natural world.

Among the myriad strengths of this near-perfect volume is that Imbler permits readers to draw the parallels themselves, to find their own meaning in the overlaps between Imbler’s life and the lives of the creatures that swim through the book’s pages. The notion of everything being a journey is perhaps overused these days, but it truly seems apt here. Those lucky enough to dive into HOW FAR THE LIGHT REACHES will travel through its pages both into the wild and deeply within, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the world looks different as a result.