Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (2022)

Shelby Van Pelt was inspired to write this novel after viewing the underwater documentary My Octopus Teacher.  The novel focuses on the friendship between an octopus and a seventy year old widow whose eighteen year old son has mysteriously disappeared while on a boat trip decades before. After her husband’s death, Tova takes up night shifts mopping floors and tidying up at the Sowell Bay Aquarium where she becomes acquainted with Marcellus – a curmudgeonly giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. The book begins with narration by the octopus, named Marcellus McSquiddles—much to his chagrin, for he is not a squid.  Marcellus complains about his captivity as he approaches the end of his lifespan, and he introduces us to the aquarium and the night shift cleaning woman, Tova.

Like the readers who made the novel a bestseller, our group praised the novel as heartfelt and uplifting. The deft shifting first person narration made us really care about its characters . We appreciated its somewhat improbable but hopeful ending that, in the way of a Victorian novel, ties up all the loose ends. Readers in our group lightly criticized the somewhat ageist stereotypical depiction of Tova who lacks the technical skill we all have as seniors who meet over zoom and are deft with cell phones, computers, and ipads. We cringed a bit at the title of her group of friends, “the knit wits” even though it was based on their initial formation as a knitting group.

 That said, we all agreed we loved the novel anyway. Our favorite character was Marcellus, and the friendship we most admired was that between Tova and Marcellus rather than her group of slightly zany friends. Some of us share Tova’s Scandinavian stoicism, social reticence, and need to be busy, and we admitted that despite our technological skills, we often identified with her. We wondered at first why she took the laborious night job, but then an insightful reader of Scandinavian heritage reminded us of Tova’s desire for privacy and avoidance of gossip, unlike the gossipy owner of  the convenience store, Ethan, whose penchant for news contributes to the plot as much as his fondness for Tova.

I highly recommend this enchanting novel. You will never again see octopus as you do prior to meeting Marcellus. In fact, one of our members admitted she has replaced her original dread of octopuses with a new fascination for their brightness.