Review: Remarkably Bright Creatures
An octopus, an old lady, and a young man walk into a small seaside town...
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Shelby Van Pelt
360 pages - 2022 - fiction, mystery
April 8th, 2024 — April 10th, 2024
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I knew from almost the beginning that this book would be getting a five-star rating.
This is one of the most compelling books I have read in a long time. My roommate can confirm: I got home from work on April 10th, picked up where I had left off—maybe five chapters from the end—finished the book in one sitting, closed the cover, and cried. Not just because it was so beautiful, but because it was so heartbreaking.
One of my favorite feelings is when you are reading a book and hit the point where you know you’re going to love it. The moment when you absolutely do not want to put the book down, and you know you’re going to finish it that day; it’s a powerful feeling. I think I experienced that feeling very early on when reading Remarkably Bright Creatures. If I didn’t have to do things like work or cook dinner, I would have read this book in one sitting.
Summary (Spoilers!)
Marcellus McSquiddles is a giant Pacific octopus living in captivity in the Sowell Bay aquarium in Washington State, near Seattle. Marcellus is incredibly intelligent, and we hear directly from his perspective—he says that he knows he can survive out of his tank for eighteen minutes before what he calls “The Consequences” begin, and he often goes out at night to get better food and more stimulation.
Tova Sullivan is a seventy-something-year-old woman who works cleaning the aquarium after hours. Because of her age, it seems that everyone is looking for a reason to let her go from her job, as she has become a liability, but she insists on continuing to work. She has a great fondness for the animals, especially Marcellus, and they seem to be her best friends; she is a part of a group called the Knit Wits, some other old women, but they are relatively judgmental and gossipy. Her husband, Will, passed away from cancer recently, and her son, Erik, had drowned—the cops ruled it a suicide, since an anchor was cut, but Tova had her doubts—when he was eighteen years old, about thirty years ago. Her brother, Lars, lives in an elder care facility an hour away, but she was never close to Lars, so even when he passes, she does not seem to have much of a reaction.
Cameron Cassmore is a thirty-year-old man, living in California, whose only family member is his Aunt Jeanne, who lives in a trailer park. His father was never in the picture, a point of contention, and his mother was a drug addict who left him with his aunt. She may or may not be alive; he does not know, and he does not care to. Cameron can never really hold down a job, and the book starts right after he has been fired from his most recent construction gig.
Ethan Mack is a Scottish man who works at, and owns, the local grocery store, Shop-Way, which is the only grocery store in Sowell Bay. He is quite the gossip and has no problem telling anyone who goes through his checkout line all of the information he has learned from other customers throughout the day. He also has quite a crush on Tova, quickly obvious from his perspective, but Tova has no idea.
At first, these lives seem quite fragmented, especially Cameron’s. He tries to look for more work, but to no avail; he tries to rent apartments in California, but is denied. Looking through his mother’s old yearbook from Sowell Bay one day, he finds a picture of Simon Brinks, a rich businessman, with his arm around his mother. Cameron assumes that Simon is his father, and heads up to Seattle to find him.
Cameron loses his luggage with all the valuables from his mother inside of it on the flight to Seattle. Luckily, though, he meets Ethan, who offers him a hot meal and a place to park the rugged RV that he bought with nearly all of his money from an odd man in the airport. Tova has fallen off of a stool and sprained her ankle, which means that she cannot work, at least for a little while; Ethan, knowing this, mentions that there is a job opening at the aquarium. Cameron nearly blows the job interview, but he nabs the position.
While working one night, Marcellus escapes his tank and he and Cameron have a bit of an altercation. Thankfully, Tova shows up, despite being told to stay at home; she coaxes Marcellus back into his tank and explains how to care for him, as well as how to properly clean the aquarium. Marcellus notes that the two of them are so genetically similar that they must be related.
Tova decides that she will move to the elder care facility, meaning she will be leaving her job behind; she packs up the house that her father had built, having a great difficulty looking through her son’s things. Meanwhile, Cameron finally lands a meeting with Simon Brinks and drives up to meet him, immediately learning that he is not, in fact, Cameron’s father. Marcellus escapes his tank and hides Cameron’s driver’s license in a place only Tova will discover. She does, but she does not put the pieces together just yet.
Cameron quits his job in a rage, upset at coming all this way for nothing; Tova is scheduled to move to the facility the next day; both of them have had tiffs with Ethan, and Cameron’s almost-girlfriend Avery thinks that he has stood her up. Marcellus, recognizing this ticking clock, retrieves Cameron’s mother’s class ring that he had been carrying around (inscribed EELS), and threw into the wolf eel exhibit while riled up. Marcellus is rapidly deteriorating, reaching the end of his life.
Tova goes to the aquarium to say goodbye and finds that a new octopus is in Marcellus’s exhibit, which indicates that he has died. Upset, she goes outside and finds Marcellus, gray and suffering, but clutching the class ring. She picks it up and realizes that the inscription—EELS—is her son’s initials. She saves Marcellus, dropping him into the ocean so that he can live out the rest of his life in peace.
Cameron starts driving back to California, but he realizes his mistake and turns around. He finds Tova and, together, they realize that he is her grandson. Both of them decide that they want to continue working at the aquarium. At the end of the book, they are having a game night together in Tova’s new condo—not a room in the elder care facility—and Ethan is there as well, sitting down to dinner as a mosaic family.
Under the Waves
This book has so many phenomenal pieces to it. One of the main highlights is the tone of the book, not just overall, but for each character. We have chapters narrated in first person by an octopus, next to ones in third person following Tova, Cameron, and Ethan, who are all very different people. Marcellus speaks with erudite vocabulary and is very straightforward; Cameron’s sections are more casual; Ethan’s chapters often have Scottish slang throughout, such as using “flat” instead of “apartment”.
Every character in the book is vivid and unyielding. There is no question on who is the focus of each separate chapter just based on the diction alone. It is refreshing, and every character is so well fleshed-out that I felt like I knew them right away.
Another asset is the attention to detail of this book. Quickly, readers learn that every detail that is introduced has some significance. Even the mention of Erik’s grave having the wrong name etched on it comes back with a vengeance, as we learn that his initials match those on the ring Cameron has toted from California.
There are details that connect the characters too, which places a lot of trust in the reader. When Cameron arrives to Sowell Bay, he meets a man in the shop with red hair and a robust personality. We, as the readers, know that this is Ethan, but of course, Cameron does not know this just yet. When Tova is heading to the aquarium one day, she is annoyed at the ramshackle camper parked between the realtor’s office and the paddle shop. We, as the readers, know the inhabitant of this camper, but to Tova, it is just a nuisance, nothing to think more of.
The book is also subtle in its details, again placing trust in the reader. There is cautious language when Tova is introduced, and it is not stated explicitly that Erik has passed. However, it is confirmed by the careful choice of which words are used. Everything is in the past tense, of course, because he was a child so long ago, but it feels like it is even more in the past tense just based on the context of the stories. The book notes people averting their gazes from her and we know, instinctively, that the town knows of the tragedy and has yet to forget it.
I found that I was rooting for every single character in the book, which is a rare and beautiful thing. In nearly every novel I’ve read, there is at least one character that I am either apathetic towards or for whom I have an active dislike. Sometimes this is by design—I don’t think we are supposed to feel anything positive for Esme Squalor in A Series of Unfortunate Events, perhaps, or that I am expected to like Jack in Behind Closed Doors. A lot of stories have a prominent villain, but they are not always the ones that readers come to hate; similarly, many stories have characters that are meant to be beloved, but come across as flat or annoying.
In Remarkably Bright Creatures, though, I wanted every single character to succeed. I desperately wanted Cameron to learn the truth of his heritage, even with his anger, flaws, and bad decisions. I wanted Tova to realize that what she really wanted, deep within her, was to stay in Sowell Bay and work at the aquarium. I wanted Ethan to finally tell Tova how he felt. And above all, I wanted Marcellus to finally feel happy and experience the ocean again.
The best part, I think, is that all of these hopes came true.
It could have been a very different book; it could have ended with a lot more heartbreak. But it didn’t. It was satisfying, but it was not unpredictably so; everything was set up like bowling pins, and they were swiftly knocked down. The resolution of the story felt earned. And circumstances at the end of the story are not perfect—Tova has had to sell her family’s house still, and these characters are all still getting to know each other, and Marcellus has most likely passed after being released back into the ocean. In the context of the story, though, all has been wrapped up, and that in itself is heartbreaking in the best way.
Found family is my favorite trope, and this is, at its core, a story of finding family, both literally (with Tova and Cameron) and metaphorically (with Marcellus). We even learn that Marcellus had found Erik’s body at the bottom of the ocean, right before the octopus was “rescued”, so the connections go back years, leading to what feels like a destined culmination.
I think I could talk about this book for a long, long time. It is one that I am already excited to reread. Not only is it a masterful example of craft, it is also a story that is compelling to the point of integration. I have never wanted more to hold hands with an octopus. I do not think I could recommend this book any more.
(And a special thanks to my friend Hailey, who recommended the book to me and allowed me to borrow her copy—sorry if I got some tears on the pages towards the end!)
Total pages read so far, 2024: 7301
Total books read so far, 2024: 20
Next book: Little Weirds by Jenny Slate