Remarkable Creatures

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I realize that I like more edge, which I thought I would get, of course, with an octopus as a main character. Austen looked elsewhere, never knowing that the artisan she briefly met was teaching his gifted daughter to find the "curies", the fossil curiosities sold to Lyme tourists like herself. He was “rescued” as an injured juvenile and has, at most just 160 days left, until his sentence is complete. Set against the dramatic landscape of the English coastal town of Lyme-Regis and centers on two female 19th century fossil hunters who make significant discoveries that changed the scientific world forever. Additional debates ensued regarding whether the Bible should be interpreted literally or figuratively.

Poor, uneducated Mary Anning and middle-class, London-bred Elizabeth Philpot form what is considered an unconventional friendship, due to their differing social classes, based on their love of fossils and fossil hunting. Through the voices of Elizabeth and the scientists, we can enjoy the formal names ascribed to fossils, like ammonites, belemnites and bivalves. The strong bond between Mary and Elizabeth sees them through struggles with poverty, rivalry and ostracism, as well as the physical dangers of their chosen obsession. Cameron is the new employee, a struggling young man who is on a quest to find the father he never knew.This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. Elizabeth, however, was possibly more inhibited due to her more “elevated” position as a lady in society than was Mary. She also knows a lot about loss, her son Eric aged 18, disappeared 30 years ago, after taking out a boat on Puget sound. I know, most people wouldn’t like having suction marks all over their arm—the big purple dots would probably look like hickies. Ammonite fossils from Lyme Regis can range from the size of a fingertip to about 2 feet in diameter.

This was a charming story about family, friendships, loss, grief, aging, loneliness, unlikely connections and moving on. When Elizabeth points out differences between Mary's "crocodile" and modern crocodiles, the local landowner explains: "It's simple, Miss Philpot. He’s not really qualified for much, employment-wise, and so it’s up to Tova to make sure he knows what the job entails.I can’t give you specific examples, or I’ll spoil the plot, but I was bludgeoned by hints of things to come. Mary soon finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who shares her passion for scouring the beaches. Tova is a seventy year old widow who lost her son many years ago and spends her nights cleaning the local aquarium.

It is forbidden to copy anything for publication elsewhere without written permission from the copyright holder. Remarkable Creatures is a stunning novel of how one woman's gift transcends class and social prejudice to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. How can we rationalize dinosaur fossils with the belief that the earth was created only a few thousand years ago?Mary is more than reluctant—the task of collecting fossils is an arduous one, and she’s content in her solitude—but the Murchisons have money and Mary is barely scraping by.