If I were to tell someone, “hey, you should read this book, it’s about an octopus” the chance of that person actually picking it up might not be very high. So although Remarkably Bright Creatures is about an octopus, I’m going to give you a little more context than that.
Synopsis
This book is told from multiple perspectives — Tova’s, Marcellus’, and Cameron’s.
Tova has lived in her town for most of her life. With her husband gone and her son gone, she spends most of her time cleaning and organizing, meeting with her knitting friends, and working nights cleaning the local aquarium. The old octopus in the aquarium, Marcellus, gets out one night. Tova gets him safely back to his tank. After this, Marcellus and Tova develop a special friendship. She learns how intelligent he is, and he uncovers information about Tova that he would do anything to communicate to her.
Cameron is young, and parts of him are broken from the hardships he’s faced. His mom left him with his aunt when he was 9, never to contact him again. He’s never known anything about his father. He can’t hold down a job, and he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. When he loses another job and his girlfriend kicks him out, he decides to book a trip to Washington on a whim to follow a lead on someone he thinks might be his dad.
Cameron ends up getting a temporary job in the aquarium and crosses paths with Tova and Marcellus. Over time they find out that they have a lot more connections than the aquarium.
Thoughts
I really loved this story. I loved the multiple perspectives that came together. It felt sort of like a puzzle at the beginning, trying to figure out how these people’s stories had anything to do with each other. Having Marcellus’ perspective was very unique and very well done. He was charming and interesting, and one of my favorite parts of the book.
[SPOILERS] Despite how much I loved this book, I did feel like there were some loose ends. It was made clear that Tova and her brother Lars were once close but had drifted apart since her son’s passing — I felt like it kept alluding to there being some specific reason why they stopped talking after that, but it was never explained. Also, I wish there had been more resolved in regards to Daphne — we still don’t know what happened to her and her exact reason for leaving her son and never contacting him again. I wish the book would have provided some closure there.
You can find this book for free on Libby and at your local library. If you want to buy your own copy, you can find it here.
More Reviews
If you liked this review of Remarkably Bright Creatures, you can read more book reviews here.
