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Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel
What if an unexpected friendship could reveal the truth you’ve been searching for? In Remarkably Bright Creatures, Tova Sullivan finds comfort in her quiet nights working at the Sowell Bay Aquarium after losing her husband and living with the mystery of her son’s disappearance decades earlier. There, she forms a unique bond with Marcellus, a highly intelligent giant Pacific octopus who holds secrets about the past. A tender and hopeful story about grief, connection, and how unlikely companions can help us find answers, healing, and new beginnings.
- Release Date
- 2022
- Length
- 368 pages
- Publisher
- Ecco
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Our Review
About the book
Tova Sullivan, a widow in her seventies, takes a night job cleaning a small aquarium in a Pacific Northwest town, years after her teenage son vanished. There she forms an unlikely bond with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus with a sharp mind, while a drifting young man named Cameron arrives in town looking for answers about his own family.
Our review
A grieving widow, an aimless young man, and a very opinionated octopus: the most charming unlikely trio in recent fiction.
Van Pelt’s debut could have been pure whimsy, but she anchors it in real grief. Tova is wonderfully drawn, a capable, private woman who keeps busy so she never has to sit with her loss, and her slow friendship with Marcellus is genuinely moving. The octopus’s chapters, dry and imperious and full of observations about humans, are the book’s secret weapon and its most original element.
The plot depends on a chain of coincidences that attentive readers will untangle well before the characters do, and Cameron’s storyline, while it improves, can feel like it belongs to a lighter, more generic novel. But the book’s kindness is earned rather than saccharine, and its portrait of community, aging and second chances leaves a lasting glow, which is rarer than it sounds.
What we loved
- Marcellus is an instant classic narrator
- Tova’s grief is handled with delicacy
- Warm small-town community without excess sugar
Keep in mind
- Plot hinges on obvious coincidences
- Cameron’s chapters are weaker early on
Read it if you like
A Man Called Ove, The Midnight Library, readers who love gentle, big-hearted fiction
The verdict
A tender, funny debut that turns a predictable plot into something special, thanks to one extraordinary octopus.
