Remarkable Creatures
February 9th, 2010 | 
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- ISBN13: 9780525951452
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A voyage of discoveries, a meeting of two remarkable women, and extraordinary time and place enrich bestselling author Tracy Chevalier’s enthralling new novel
From the moment she’s struck by lightening as a baby, it is clear that Mary Anning is marked for greatness. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, she learns that she has “the eye”-and finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight. In an arena dominated by men, however, Mary is barred from the academic community; as a young woman with unusual interests she is suspected of sinful behavior. Nature is a threat, throwing bitter, cold storms and landslips at her. And when she falls in love, it is with an impossible man.
Luckily, Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a recent exile from London, who also loves scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy. Ultimately, in the struggle to be recognized in the wider world, Mary and Elizabeth discover that friendship is their greatest ally.
Remarkable Creatures is a stunning novel of how one woman’s gift transcends class and social prejudice to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. Above all, is it a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship.
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In “Remarkable Creatures,” author Tracy Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring, Deluxe Edition, The Lady and the Unicorn: A Novel) takes the reader back to a time before dinosaurs were thought to roam the earth where the Bible and Aristotle were revered as the key references in understanding the organization of living things. But what if, as occurs in this very readable tale focusing on Mary Anning, one of the first fossil hunters of the early 19th century, her discoveries and her desire to be acknowledged, accepted and authenticated by the all male geological societies of the time, someone discovers the remains of an animal that no longer exists? Does this suggest that the omnipotent God made a mistake or that perhaps the entire Scripture-based theory regarding the earth, its age and its continuing evolution requires more scrutiny? Chevalier cleverly combines these large-scaled themes to a smaller framed story about the trials and tribulations of two women’s friendship in an extremely compelling work reminiscent in tone and readability of her earlier bestsellers.
Some other reviews have criticized Chevalier’s use of a modern voice and sensibility to project the thoughts and actions of her main character narrators, the upper class spinster, Elizabeth Philpot and working class fossil hunter, Mary Anning. Indeed, as early 21st-century readers, we, perhaps, have forgotten that as commonplace as the idea of dinosaurs roaming a former earth may be in our CGI-simulated, media-driven and internet-sourced knowledge banks, the concept of women able to walk down a street unescorted without blemishing her reputation was considered an unequivocally strange breach of societal rules. Chevalier does her best to detail the psychological frustration of the women in her story by successfully cultivating their need to overachieve with regard to being thought inferior to their male counterparts in terms of education and class. If her characters’ thoughts are a tad more 2010 than 1810, this reviewer intuits that the mindsets illustrated are intentional and meant to infer a still ensuing battle. Her depiction of the inherent jealousy between the two women adequately describes an automatic mechanism inherent amongst females whether they are professional colleagues or simply rivals for a man’s attention. Chevalier’s ability to weave such natural tendencies into her historical story without burdening the momentum of the plot makes her the accomplished raconteur that she is and keeps us coming back each and every time she offers another glimpse at an actual historical person’s contribution to his/her era.
In “Remarkable Creatures,” Chevalier alternates her narrative to reflect the thoughts of two women from different classes who share a passion for fossil finding and eventually become lifelong friends. Elizabeth Philpot’s rather fussy, persnickety personality is captured with a feisty good humor while Mary’s perseverance and lumbering struggle to attain the blessing of the scientific community seems indicative of her class as well as her passionate psyche. Even with her veteran novelist status, Chevalier does a wonderful job of changing her voice to depict the nuances in each woman’s character.
Chevalier renders Elizabeth Philpot’s adventure to London to defend her friend’s scholarship with so much realism with regard to the spectrum of emotions being spent by the character that it called to mind some of my own early ventures into the bigger world. Chevalier more than adequately details the feeling of exhilaration mingled with trepidation and guilty pride that one experiences when one moves outside of the realm of which they have become accustomed.
Amidst the fossil-strewn backdrop of Lyme Regis and the advent of an entirely new way of looking at the history of the world, Chevalier’s chronicle of Anning’s paleontology primer earmarks these great scientific milestones with the gusto and the naiveté associated with discovering concrete evidence that disputes accepted theory. At the same time, her story of friendship shines with the ability to depict understandable human failings without seeming contrived and wisdom without getting preachy.
Bottom line? Tracy Chevalier’s novel “Remarkable Creatures” hallmarks the great fossil discoveries of the early 19th century with a spectacular depiction of locale, custom and gender prejudices that would set any 21st century woman’s teeth on edge. Recommended.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
“reneofc”
Rating: 4 / 5
Mary Anning, as those who went through an early dinosaur phase might recollect, is the young girl who at age 12 (in 1811) discovered the first ichthyosaurus and plesiosaur, along with many, many other fossils along the cliffs at Lyme Regis where she grew up. Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures retells Mary’s story, expanding it with fictionalized material as well as adding actual details left out of most of the history surrounding her (one of the most fascinating being that Mary survived being struck by lightning).
The novel has a twinned narrative. Part is from Mary’s point-of-view, while the rest is from Elizabeth Philpot, a real-life character who lives in Lyme Regis with her two also-unmarried sisters. Elizabeth is also an amateur fossil hunter and it is this interest that at first brings the two women together, despite their age and class difference, then separates them, then brings them together once more.
Chevalier does an excellent job with both characters. Each woman’s voice is distinctive and the development of the friendship over the years, a rocky journey filled with shared excitement, jealousies, envy, and anger as the balance of power shifts between them is quietly compelling, as is the way in which the two react differently to the changes based on their differences in age, class, education, and expectations for the future. The same is true as well with their reactions and interactions with the various men in their life, most drawn from historical personages: the aristocratic Lord Birch, the Oxford geologist William Buckland, the French naturalist Cuvier, some of whom were Mary’s allies, some her foes, and all of whom owed Mary some part of their fame and career. The male characters are solid enough creations, if not as sharply drawn; which is true as well of the other females: Mary’s mother, Elizabeth’s sisters.
The physical descriptions in the book are vivid and precise and fully create the world of fossils and fossil hunting in good weather and bad, in spring or summer, through mud and dirt and seawater; the harsh labor involved for those who are serious about it, as opposed to the tourists who come to skim along the beach then buy whatever Mary has found and is selling in the family store. That same vividness and precision extends to the science in the story, which is presented cleanly and concisely and as needed, rather than to show off the author’s research or paper over weakness in plot. The author’s enthusiasm for the subject shines through in her characters’.
Outside of the subject matter of fossils, what I particularly liked and thought Chevalier did a good job with was the way in which the book is set on the cusp of major changes in thinking about religion and philosophy and nature and humanity–we see it in just the right amount and in uncontrived fashion. One of my favorite means of showing this was via the differences/changes in language and jargon–the way the characters spoke of what they were finding, how they were labeled.
There is little to complain about in Remarkable Creatures. The ending felt a bit rushed, mostly in terms of character changes than plot events. Beyond that, the book was pretty much seamlessly enjoyable. Highly recommended.
Rating: 4 / 5
Ever since I read the book “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, I have been a huge fan of this author. The research she does on whatever she is writing about is impeccable, but at the same time, she is able to make the characters and story come alive with her beautiful writing style.
Remarkable Creatures is a fictional story about a real fossil hunter named Mary Anning. Historically, Mary Anning was born into a very poor family and her curiosities found on the Lyme Regis beach were sold to tourists to bring help support her family. Mary had an amazing gift for finding unusual items, usually fossil and at the age of 12 she found the first complete fossilised skeleton of an ichthyosaur. One of Mary Anning’s key contributions with her dinosaur fossils was the evidence they gave to the theory of extinction.
However, this book is a fictional view (with plenty of true facts sewn in) of Mary’s personal life as a woman palaeontologist who was constantly being looked down upon by males in her field, partly because she was female, partly because of her humble background. Maybe the title of this book was inspired by the fossils that are discovered on the beaches of Lyme Regis. However, the characters in the book are just as remarkable and an amazing tale of female friendship.
Sadly, the women in this story faced discrimination in a sexist society. Typically, women who worked in the 1800′s in Britain were household servant as men considered them inferior in intellect and discouraged any sort of higher learning.
This of course, put a huge amount of pressure on women to marry by the age of 25 or risk being labeled an old maid. Remarkable Creatures gives a brief look into the loneliness of spinsterhood for Mary and three of her closest friends.
Rating: 5 / 5
Remarkable Creatures is the “remarkable” story of Elizabeth Philpot and Mary Anning, two female paleontologists living in 1810s and `20s Lyme Regis, England. They were two different women: one a lady who moves to the seaside in light of her spinster status (at age 25, which made me laugh); and the other a working-class girl, twenty years apart in age but drawn together by their love of fossils.
I read this book in one sitting–sitting in the backseat of a car driving across Pennsylvania, within the space of four hours or so. I’m lucky that this was one of the books I brought along on my trip; this is the kind of story that really draws the reader in. What I love of Tracy Chevalier’s novels, both this one and her previous ones, is that she’s so versatile. She really gets to know her subject matter, researching it thoroughly. Paleontology is not my thing, but Tracy Chevalier makes it interesting for even the lay person to read about. At a time when the theory of evolution was (for lack of a better word) evolving, this is a novel that pits science against religion–because the theories that scientists in the early 19th century directly contradicted the teachings of the church.
And yet, this book isn’t solely about paleontology, or religion; it’s also the story of a lifelong friendship. Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot had nearly nothing in common, except for a lifelong interest in the fossils they found upon the beach at Lyme Regis. The novel is told alternately from the points of view of the two main characters; each has a unique voice (right down to Mary’s rather endearing habit of calling vertebrae “verteberries.”). Elizabeth’s obsession with her spinster status got a bit on my nerves at time, and I enjoyed reading the story from Mary’s point of view much better than Elizabeth’s. Still, I loved the story and historical setting, both of which are highly engaging. In comparison with some of Chevalier’s other books (Girl With a Pearl Earring, Falling Angels, and The Lady and the Unicorn are my favorites), this book ranks up there with her best. This is an enduring story about the unlikely friendship between two women, one of which apparently inspired the tongue twister “she sells sea shells by the sea shore.”
Rating: 5 / 5
Remarkable Creatures tells the tale of two women – Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot – who share a love of fossils, and both of whom are barred from the all-male academic circles because they are women. A rainbow of emotions flies between the duo: jealousy, loyalty, friendship. And while the story itself lacks interesting plot turns and the well-written tensions of past Chevalier novels, the narrative is as finely tuned as ever – Chevalier has a gift for turning ordinary observations into keenly aware internal monologues. For example, one beautiful passage starts off as a meditation of the night sky but turns into Mary Anning’s voice, tinged with doubt: “I [had] begun to feel there was a thread running between the earth and [the stars]. Another thread was strung out too, connecting the past to the future, with the ichie at one end, dying all that long time ago and waiting for me to find it. I didn’t know what was at the other end of the thread…my life led up to that moment…” The writer gives a fine turn of phrase, which is one of the excellent ways in which this novel operates. Sections throughout the book explaining the scientific end of fossils is educational but sometimes dry, and the book seems smaller in scope when compared to Chevalier’s previous books. In the end, however, Remarkable Creatures is a intimate story that is worth reading, especially with the writer’s nice choice of scenery: the beaches off the English coast give a moody, atmospheric edge to an otherwise standard story.
Rating: 4 / 5