Remarkably Bright Creatures
Tova Sullivan is a woman quietly held together by routine. Widowed and still carrying the grief of her son Erik's unexplained disappearance thirty years prior, she takes on a night-shift cleaning job at a small aquarium in Sowell Bay. It's there she crosses paths with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus with a sharp mind, a guarded nature, and, as it turns out, a deeply personal investment in Tova's unresolved past. What begins as an unlikely companionship slowly becomes the thread that pulls a long-buried truth into the light. Shelby Van Pelt's debut is a quietly assured piece of storytelling. Marcellus is a genuine triumph as a narrator, observant and drily witty, his chapters offering a strange, wonderful perspective on human behaviour. Tova, meanwhile, is the kind of character you root for without quite realising you've started. The mystery at the novel's heart is handled with restraint, which makes its resolution all the more affecting. This is the sort of book that earns its warmth honestly, never tipping into sentimentality it hasn't worked for. It's funny in places, melancholy in others, and surprisingly gripping throughout. Readers have praised it as wholly original, and it's hard to disagree. If you've ever wanted a novel that pairs genuine emotional weight with the inner life of a cephalopod, this is, rather wonderfully, exactly that book.
- Author: Shelby Van Pelt
- Publisher: Bloomsbury India
- Genre: Mystery
- ISBN: 978-1526649676
- Pages: 384 pages