Remarkable Creatures

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The chapters are short which leads to the reading enjoyment along with the wonderful prose and observations. Life is sad and can be devastatingly difficult to endure, yet Van Pelt writes of the human spirit, the human need to find light and happiness. Here's an animated sequence my friend Jill found of dialog from the historical novel Curiosity, by Joan Thomas, contrasting the perspectives of a typical 19th century Englishman with French naturalist and zoologist Georges Cuvier who doubted Anning's findings. We see Cameron, a young man who can't get his shit life together long enough to keep a job or girlfriend go on a quest to find his deadbeat dad some free cash. When he arrives in Sowell Bay just in time to be a temp for Tova's job as a cleaner in the aquarium, these characters's stories intersect beautifully to create a heartwarming read that's wise and quirky. A wonderful portrayal of how to thrive in loneliness ❤️❤️

Anning's accomplishments are so big that the interior romantic life Tracy Chevalier imagines for her seems almost sophmoric. in “Remarkably Bright Creatures” — is a male …. so Marcellus has about a 4 year life span…(as Marcellus himself will tell us)…This might be my favorite book this year, and will also be one of the best books I’ve ever read. Why did I love it so much? Tova began working there after her husband died, preferring to share her time with those who don’t ask a lot of questions, and so she and Marcellus develop a kind of silent bond. Tova shares some stories, but Marcellus can also see the sadness that weighs her down, and so periodically he will leave her small tokens. While he manages to, periodically, stray beyond his glass walls that are meant to keep him from straying, Tova’s fondness for him grows. Her affection for him grows, as does his for her. Remarkable Creatures doesn't have the same sure hand or intricately drawn world as Girl with a Pearl Earring, but Chevalier's own curiosity in her subject can not be doubted as you can see in this Tracy Chevalier ">BBC slide show narrated by Tracy Chevalier and this Barnes and Noble Studio beach walk interview with on Tracy Chevalier (Thanks, Eric, for sending me this link, wonderful interview).

Listened to the audiobook narrated by the stellar Marin Ireland with a bit of help from Michael Urie as Marcellus (the Giant Pacific Octopus). If you have a choice, the audiobook is a fantastic way to experience this lovely, heartwarming book. Anning's own contemporaries and their theological preoccupation at the time with whether God's creatures literally endure is quite interesting and some of these same concepts will perplex Teilhard de Chardin nearly one hundred years later. Some details are extremely fictional—there’s no indication that Mary’s mother, Molly, ever set foot on the beach or ever searched for a fossil. She was only reluctantly won over to fossil selling as a way of earning cold, hard cash. I know Mary’s dog, Tray, was killed in a landslide, but I don’t think that Mary herself was caught in it (although it made good, dramatic sense in this version). I also wish that Chevalier had captured more clearly the intellectual achievements of Mary and the expertise that she drew on to educate many of the fossil-hunting men who came to her for assistance. There was definitely an auction by Lieutenant-Colonel Birch to fund the Anning family, but no indications that it was Elizabeth who shamed him into it or that he was romantically involved with either woman.

Who stars in Remarkable Creatures: Cast List

Chevalier, however, has two heroines, two voices. Mary is the young one, the uneducated girl with lightning in her bones, who reacts to everything by instinct. It is the older woman whose voice dominates the novel. Elizabeth Philpot was also a historical character (her fossil fish collection ended up in Oxford) and her situation at the start of Chevalier's novel is familiar from Austen: that of a middle-class spinster sent away by a married brother to live more cheaply elsewhere. Elizabeth settles at Lyme, where she begins collecting fossils. As sappy as it sounds having an octopus as a leading character—Shelby absolutely makes it works brilliantly… (feelings are all so real)… The book was incredibly slow and very mundane at times. More than halfway through nothing significant had happened. There were a few chapters that were completely pointless and didn't contribute to the story in any way. Tracy Chevalier (author of Girl with a Pearl Earring) created a fictional account of the friendship of two women who not only existed in real life but who also changed natural history as we know it. And all this decades before Charles Darwin would publish that little known tome about the the origin of species. The book opens with Marcellus McSquiddles (named by the 4 year old daughter of the Aquarium’s manager) introducing himself to us with a warning that the life span of a Giant Pacific Octopus is only 4 years (1,460 days) so our time with him WILL be brief. He was “rescued” as an injured juvenile and has, at most just 160 days left, until his sentence is complete.