Remarkable Creatures

I have enjoyed so many of Tracy Chevalier's books, including her first wonderful and popular novel, The Girl With The Pearl Earring.  This book, Remarkable Creatures, just reconfirms for me what a fabulous author she is.  She has a talent for taking a historically little known person and bringing their story to life.

In the novel, Chevalier has taken the facts of Mary Anning's life and discoveries and brought them out of obscurity.  This novel is both a delightful story of friendship, love and jealousy, and of history, biography and scientific discovery.  Until now, Mary Anning' name would only be known in the scientific circles of dinosaur hunters.  Also portrayed in the this novel is another real life character,
Elizabeth Philpot, who helped bring Mary the recognition she deserved.  It is always even more fascinating to read a novel that teaches you something new.

In the 1800 in England, women did not have the same rights or privileges as men.  Women were still thought of as property.  Marriage was what a woman should aspire to and spinsters were shuttled off to live quietly in obscurity.  Such is the fate of the three Philpot sisters.  Margaret, Louise and Elizabeth are set up by their brother to live their life out in the seaside town of Lyme Regis.  Elizabeth discovers there are many fossils of fish vertebrae and starts to collect them.  Her sister Louise is happy gardening and Margaret is the family socialite.  Though they are living in reduced means after leaving London, as three spinsters, they are happy in the seaside village.
Elizabeth becomes friends with a young girl who collects fossils curios to sell to tourists and collectors.  When she starts to uncover unusual fossilized skeletons which attract attention from the scientific community, the friendship between Mary and Elizabeth becomes strained.

This is a story of how the two women find their way through the pressures of class distinction and social prejudice to find that friendship can withstand jealousy and anger.  Mutual appreciation, shared passion and loyalty can overcome envy and jealousy.  The strength of friendship during an era in history when women were not seen and definitely not heard.  This is story that shows how when you let go of the feelings of conventionality, and caring what others will think you reach a feeling of freedom and empowerment that lets you experience amazing new situations and make incredible accomplishments.

New updated review: second read:
Written by Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures turned out to be an incredible book.  I admit I started this book just because I was supposed to read it for a book discussion group.  Not wanting to show up for another month not having read the book, I started in.  At first I thought the book was boring.  The premise was interesting but I did not see where it was going and it seemed dull.  But as you realize that the story line is not the most important thing about this book, this plot line becomes more and more incredible.

Remarkable Creatures is a book about the relationship between Mary Anning, who along with her brother hunt along the cliffs on the south coast of England and find fossils and the remaining bones of animals that have been extinct for hundreds of years.  They are uneducated and this being the 1800s are not even sure of what they are finding.  They sell them as curios to tourists to keep themselves and their mother fed.

This is also the story of Elizabeth Philpot, a cranky, cantankerous, spinster who along with her sisters has moved to the Lyme Regis after the death of her parents.  She and her sisters live together, traveling to London in the summer, so as not to be a burden on their married brother and his family.  Elizabeth is interested in science and fossils and meets Mary out on the cliffs.  They form a fast friendship despite a difference in age.  They are more knowledgable about the fossils than most of the men who come to the area looking to purchase their fossils.

Most remarkable about this novel to me was how these women are collecting fossils and fragments of animals they have not even heard of.  This is a time in history when we have not yet realized how the world was created.  This a a very religious area, where the church and the theory of G-d creating the world with what is listed in the Bible and no other animals is the standard belief system.  This is all happening before Charles Darwin brings out his ideas of evolution and origins of species.  The information that Mary is discovering is controvercial at this time.  How could there be an animal that is now extinct?  Why would G-d create an animal only to let it die out?  G-d did not make mistakes.

It is remarkable the fossils they collected.  It is remarkable that especially Mary did not really get the credit she deserved .  At age 12 she discovered the first complete specimen of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile about 200 million years old.  Without fancy tools, she was able to pull out these animals almost intact.  She was able to clean them and put them together correctly.

In the end remarkably, Mary and Elizabeth, stay close through landslides, arguments and jealousy and help each other grow stronger and more educated about fossils and life.