RA Crossroads: Of Monsters & Other Remarkable Creatures

Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures

By Neal Wyatt -- Library Journal, 02/04/2010

As Lewis Carroll’s Alice so aptly points out, "What is the use of a book...without pictures or conversations?" Welcome to RA Crossroads, where books, movies, music, and other media converge and whole-collection reader’s advisory service goes where it may. In this column, Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures leads me down a winding path.

Tracy Chevalier’s Victorian novel Remarkable Creatures is about two real women who were figuring things out before Darwin. On the shores of Lyme Regis, and in the heavy stratifications of its cliffs, were fossils of monsters and fairy food (plesiosaur and Jurassic sea urchins), among other things. Mary Anning, a working-class girl with a great eye, and Elizabeth Philpot, an impoverished spinster of elevated standing, met in Lyme Regis and together changed history—though they got little credit for it. Chevalier draws upon the stories of these women to retell a story of place, time, science, religion, and female friendship.

The fictional Mary and Elizabeth are also remarkable, interacting and searching for fossils while learning from each other and weathering betrayal, love, and pain. The historical and scientific backstory that Chevalier weaves into their tale, along with her rich evocation of place, makes this one of those books that lingers for a good while after reading.

Fans of the book are going to want to dig right away into two of its aspects: the fossil hunts and Lyme. For more on the fossil hunts, consider Shelley Emling's The Fossil Hunter, which delves deeper into the lives of Mary and Elizabeth and provides a needed context for the explorations and discoveries their finds were prompting. Another great book is Judith Pascoe’s The Hummingbird Cabinet, which turns the clock back a bit on the period Chevalier is exploring but nonetheless captures the obsession and pursuit of fossils, with a delightful chapter on Mary.

For Lyme Regis, a wonderfully broody place and very atmospheric, almost falling into the ocean, the book to turn to first is John Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It is steeped in location, and while nothing like Remarkable Creatures, it is also about a paleontologist. Read it for the way Fowles fills the pages with Lyme (and, if the book is new to you, for the wonderful way he plays with the idea of story itself). Next, a bit more like Remarkable Creatures in its consideration of women and society, read Jane Austen’s Persuasion, as Anne and others stroll the windy streets of Lyme, and silly Louisa Musgrove jumps from the Cobb as she flirts with Captain Wentworth.

As to pure readalikes, Chevalier almost always gets linked with Susan Vreeland because of both authors’ focus on artists. The pleasure Chevalier delivers, however, doesn’t solely rest on the topics she explores; instead, readers enjoy her books for their rich evocation of place and creation of character. Consider Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop for its similar immersion in a particular place, its focus on women’s lives, its seaside setting, and its delightfully gothic feel. Gail Godwin’s A Mother and Two Daughters offers a similar character-rich exploration of women searching for self within a society that defines them. In Godwin’s case, the story is set in contemporary America.