Chevalier takes a sensational figure (and Mary Anning was a real celebrity in her own day) and focuses on the quiet, unsensational part of the story. Mary Anning, her subject in Remarkable Creatures, is a rock star to the natural history museum set, a feminist hero dangled before little girls to get them excited about science and to prove that paleontology is not just for boys. Above all, is it a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship.Įxploiting a beloved historical icon in fiction is risky business, but Chevalier dives in with gusto. 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.
Ultimately, in the struggle to be recognized in the wider world, Mary and Elizabeth discover that friendship is their greatest ally. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy. Luckily, Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a recent exile from London, who also loves scouring the beaches. And when she falls in love, it is with an impossible man. Nature is a threat, throwing bitter, cold storms and landslips at her.
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. 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.
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. From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear that Mary Anning is marked for greatness.
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