Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures (HarperCollins 2022) has been hanging out on my TBR stack for well over a year. It’s moved from one stack to another, but I kept choosing something else. I suppose I didn’t want to be let down by yet another overhyped book.
Long story short: I wasn’t.
Short story long: I could kick myself for waiting as long as I did to read this Backman-esque heart-hug of a novel. It’s charming and witty, and full of heart and sheer humanness. Within the first few pages, I predicted that Tova would release Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus housed at her place of employment, the Sowell Bay Aquarium. That set me on the hunt for another recent read where a woman released an octopus from her place of employment. After realizing it was The Memory of Animals, I could then focus on Tova’s tale, which is quite a bit different than Neffy’s.
Tova’s son disappeared when he was 18, lost to the Puget Sound, and nearly everyone but Tova believes it was suicide. It’s been thirty years since she lost him. After her husband died of cancer, she took a job cleaning at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Not because she needed the money, but because she needed the distraction. Tova takes pride in her work and in the animals. Her favorite is Marcellus, a mischievous and intelligent escape artist that becomes her friend.
Cameron is the son of a junkie. Despite being brilliant, he can’t hold a job down. His Peter Pan syndrome likely developed from the trauma from his mother and lack of father figure, but it is at times a little too much. He’s a thirty-year-old man child – you just want to shake him. He’s in Sowell Bay because he thinks some wealthy developer in the area may be his father and he wants to shake him down for money.
The mystery isn’t really a mystery. I don’t much think it was supposed to be, but the unveiling is the warmth of a hug or freshly baked cookies. Marcellus has some cute little sections – they may seem quaint, but Marcellus is our detective and ultimately the driving force of the novel that breathes life into a past and adds flesh to bones long thought buried.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 