Remarkable Creatures

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.