Remarkably Bright Creatures
by Shelby Van Pelt
Tova Sullivan has been cleaning the Sowell Bay Aquarium at night for two years since her husband died. The work is quiet and she prefers it that way. Marcellus is a giant Pacific octopus who lives in one of the tanks and has been observing the humans around him with more clarity than they deserve. Cameron Cassidy is a twenty-something drifting through bad decisions and looking for a father he’s never known. These three threads are moving toward each other from the beginning. It takes a while to see how.
“Humans. For the most part, you are noisy, and dim.”
What It Actually Felt Like
I went into this open minded but unsure, but also the cover is BEAUTIFUL. A book about a widow finding purpose through unlikely friendships with sea creatures had a certain reputation on the internet and I was not sure I was the target audience for it. I was wrong and I’m not above admitting that. I loved this book.
What sold me was Marcellus. His chapters are written in first person from inside the tank, with the particular observational logic of a creature that is extremely intelligent and has absolutely no patience for human self-deception. He notices everything. He has opinions about everyone. He is also, genuinely and without any cuteness about it, dying. Those three things together create a narrator who is both funny and quietly devastating, and Van Pelt is careful never to make him precious.
Tova’s grief is handled with the kind of restraint that lets it be actually felt rather than performed. The mystery threading through her story, about what really happened to her son Erik decades ago, moves at the pace of someone who has learned to hold loss without letting it be the only thing in the room. She doesn’t talk about her grief constantly. She just makes her decisions from inside it, and you see it in every choice she makes.
Cameron’s storyline is messier and more frustrating in the early chapters, which is exactly right for a person who is actively making everything harder than it needs to be. When it clicked into place against Tova’s story and Marcellus’s observations, I stopped being skeptical and started just reading. The ending did not have to hit the way it did and yet.
The Honest Part
If you’re someone who generally resists cozy emotional fiction because it tends to earn its feelings through manipulation rather than actual writing, this one is different. It doesn’t cheat. The sentimentality is real but it’s built on genuine character work. I can’t promise you won’t feel something corny but I can promise it is worth it.
Who This Is For
People who need a book that trusts them to handle grief and still delivers something warm on the other end of it. If you’ve been told this book is wholesome and you’ve been resisting because of that, stop resisting.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sweet, sad, charming. One of my favorites.
Tags contemporary fiction, grief, found family, mood: warm and gentle
