Remarkable Creatures: A Novel
Plume, October 2010
From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is different. Though poor and uneducated, she learns on the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast that she has a unique gift: "the eye" to spot fossils no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip -- and the scientific world alight with both admiration and controversy. Prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster and also a fossil hunter, becomes Mary Anning's unlikely champion and friend, and together they forge a path to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century.
Paperback | ISBN: 9780452296725 | Publication Date: October 2010
Reviews:
"A stunning story, compassionately reimagined. . . . Chevalier
turns a warming spotlight on a friendship cemented by shared obsession
and mutual respect."
--Ruth Padel, The Guardian (London)
"Engrossing . . . [an] illuminating story of women finding
fulfillment is shared passions and the bounds of friendship."
--Los Angeles Times
"So vivid you can feel the sea breeze on your face."
--More
"Riveting . . . With this intriguing story, Chevalier
convincingly creates a past time and place and gives a nod to two
forgotten women."
--Chicago Sun-Times
"Delightful . . . a rich and appealing portrait."
--Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[Chevalier] admirably weaves historical figures and actual events
into a compelling narrative. We care for these two headstrong women as
they defy, sometimes unwittingly by just being themselves, the
conventions of their day. It is a remarkable story about two very
remarkable women."
-- San Francisco Chronicle
"As with her earlier work, [Remarkable Creatures] gives us
the minutiae of everyday life and evocative, almost visceral response
to the visual world."
--The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Chevalier excavates her two main characters with great confidence
and wit. . . . Like a fossil hunter herself, she has again combed the
beaches of history for subject matter and created an egging story for
the modern reader."
--Financial Times
