by Nicole Yurcaba
I discovered Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures in June 2022 while visiting Paragraphs Bookstore in Mount Vernon, OH. I was in town for the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshops, and the bright orange octopus adorning the novel’s cover kept taunting me. See, I have a penchant for the sea, sea creatures, and sea lore. I’m happiest when I’m in water, so I really do believe I am a mermaid trapped in human form. Nonetheless, Remarkably Bright Creatures is not another book about underwater magical kingdoms inhabited by merfolk who ride seahorses and sing happy songs to fish. In its examination of loneliness, familial loss, and decades-long grief, Remarkably Bright Creatures is emotionally gritty with a few skippable parts.
The novel hosts a unique cast of characters. There’s elderly and lonely Tova, the Sowell Bay Aquarium housekeeper whose son, Erik, disappeared at sea nearly 30 years ago. There’s the seemingly displaced Scotsman, Ethan, whose reckless pursuits of women led him to settle in Sowell Bay and open an all-but-dying grocery store, and there’s the to-the-wind, jobless Cameron whose sole purpose in life seems to be losing jobs within only a few days of being hired. However, the most lovable character in Remarkably Bright Creatures isn’t any of these three. No, that title goes to Marcellus, the Giant Pacific Octopus who has lived four years in captivity at Sowell Bay Aquarium and is facing his last few weeks of life within his tank’s confines.
As Marcellus faces his mortality, he longs for the sea’s freedom, and he has another mission to accomplish–helping Tova overcome the loss of her son by sending subtle clues about Cameron’s true identity to Tova. Marcellus also carries another secret: he’s smart, and he has learned to escape his tank for up to twenty minutes at a time. His secret, nonetheless, remains safe with Tova. Tova and Marcellus are parallel characters. Both are empathetic; both have the strange ability to read others’ feelings. Van Pelt’s portrayal of Marcellus as an empathetic creature is not so fictional whatsoever. According to Science Daily, research has shown that octopuses, crabs, and fish have shown they possess the ability to avoid dangerous, painful situations. Also, Tova’s emotional attachment to Marcellus isn’t so fictional either. In 2015, at Boston’s New England Aquarium, naturalist Sy Montgomery said “Goodbye” to Octavia, a dying octopus which Montgomery had studied for years for her book. Montgomery’s research revealed that octopuses possess deep emotional intelligence, and Van Pelt’s depiction of this in Marcellus’s character is on point.
While Van Pelt’s portrayal of Marcellus is interesting and engaging, and while he and Tova perfectly compliment one another, other characters fall short. Characters like Avery, who eventually becomes Cameron’s love interest, are stereotypical and vapid. At these points in the novel, the writing slows, and readers can easily skip over the Avery-Cameron parts without losing much of the plotline. In fact, if Van Pelt had foregone including Avery and the Avery-Cameron romance, the novel would have been much stronger. However, one can only conclude that Cameron needed a stronger motive than actually finding his grandmother (Oops! Spoiler alert!) and managing to keep a job for more than a few days in order to stay in Sowell Bay.
Apart from its commentary about human-animal relations, Remarkably Bright Creatures carries a meaningful message about overcoming grief. Tova is the paramount example of this. Her grief about her son’s disappearance has weighed on her each and every day since Erik vanished. This, combined with her husband’s death from cancer, has left Tova resistant to change. She refuses to date and lives alone, despite Ethan’s obvious romantic interest in her. She performs the same routines, such as completing the newspaper’s daily crossword puzzles, without fail, and her cleaning habits are an obvious compensation for the fulfilling human relationships her life obviously lacks. Tova’s situation is, perhaps, not all that rare these days, especially as older, childless adults face the aging process bravely–and alone. While Tova could easily make a change in her life and move into a nearby retirement village, something about the change does not seem quite right, and, ultimately, another question arises: How does one leave the place they have known for their entire lives? As readers see, Sowell Bay is a special place, and its characteristics might remind those who hail from Small Town, USA, of the quirks and perks which make such places not only unique, but a home all their own.
Remarkably Bright Creatures is an octopus’s garden all its own. Linguistically and structurally, it is not a challenging book. It is an ideal weekend read for when one’s simply looking to curl up for a few hours and indulge in a few hours of pleasure reading. It would pair well with Gina Chung’s Sea Change, and despite its dark themes, Van Pelt’s novel is a remarkably bright read.
Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба–Nikola Yurtsaba) is a Ukrainian (Hutsul/Lemko) American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, West Trade Review, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and is a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review of Books.
