Biography
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she’s now missing the mountains in the Chicago area with her husband and two children.
Shelby Van Pelt grew up in Tacoma, and as a child, she says, her favorite place was the aquarium at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium.
“I loved to go there,” she says, “hang out for long periods of time while I sat in the dark and looked at jellyfish. I liked that it was dark; it felt more personal than other parts of the zoo. You kind of felt like you were part of it instead of just looking at animals in an enclosure. It was more immersive.”
Biography
This is her debut novel, that quickly hit the New York Times bestseller list, which actually is a question for discussion. How do you explain why this novel took off so rapidly?
On her website, https://shelbyvanpelt.com/published-works/, you will find a list of previous publications, predominantly "flash fiction," that is, short stories of under 1500 words. So, she has published, but with a very limited scope.
During an interview with the Los Angeles Public Library, she was asked, " As a debut author, what have you learned during the process of getting your novel published that you would like to share with other writers about this experience?
She replied: "After I signed with my agent (the amazing Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary), she shared with me a bit about their process. And she told me that her associate, Maria, who takes a first pass at submissions, had written on the margin of my query letter: “this is either bananas or brilliant.”
But Kristin took a chance and read this “bananas” submission and agreed to work with me.
Cast of characters
Marcellus—the octopus: originally brought to the aquarium to save his life when he was young, but unfortunately had to be kept in captivity for the rest of his life, and that end is coming shortly throughout the novel. Until the end, when Tova sets him free, pushing him down to the shore in a yellow plastic bucket, water sloshing. He descends to the spot where Erik's bones lie.
Tova Sullivan, senior adult who works nights cleaning the Sowell Bay (fictional) aquarium
Her husband Will has recently passed away, as has her brother Lars Lindgren, when the book opens.
More importantly, her 18-year-old son Erik went out on a boat one night 30 years ago and never returned, although the boat was found
She's a member of the KnitWits club, with girl friends Mary Ann, Laura, and Barb
Terry Bailey, Tova's boss at the aquarium who also hires Ethan, despite some misgivings, to replace Tova temporarily after she fell and injured her foot.
Cast of characters
Cameron is a rather aimless 30-year-old boy who has never quite grown up, doesn't have a career, can't keep jobs for long, sponges off his friends, and takes advantage of his Aunt Jeanne who raised him when his mother left at age 9. He's got a chip on his shoulder because he doesn't know his father and sets out to find the man he thinks is his father, Simon Brinks, intent to exhort money from him.
Katie is the girl friend at the beginning of the novel who throws him out because he can't make the rent
Avery is the girl friend at the end of the novel, owner of a paddle shop, with a 15-year-old son Marco. She “talked someone down from this ledge, once. Stopped her from . . ." That was Daphne.
Other friends are Brad and Elizabeth—the three-some have been friends since childhood, until Brad and Elizabeth got married, bought a house, and are now having a baby.
Cast of characters
Ethan Mack, Scotsman, who owns the Shop-Way store Tova and others frequent, the only grocery in town. He befriends Cameron, lets him park his camper on the driveway, and mentions the job at the aquarium to replace Tova. Terry is a friend of his. Cameron needs the job to repay his Aunt Jeanne's loan.
Ethan is also a music fan, with a souvenir T-shirt from a Grateful Dead concert in 1995, which Tova ruins and replaces. He has a crush on her.
Adam Wright first meets Tova as she's sitting on a bench at Hamilton Park working on a crossword puzzle; he provides an answer and she offers a bottle of water.
Tova goes there, "to be alone with her thoughts, when she needs a break from being alone in her house."
Adam was a Erik's friend, remembers Tova. At the lunch celebrating Mary Ann's move, the puzzle begins when he recalls that Erik was "seeing a girl" just before he died. Tova has to find that girl because she may know something about the night Erik died.
Cast of characters
Sandy, Adam's girl friend, runs into Tova at Ethan's grocery store—she's eating cherries—and tells Tova that the girl's name was Daphne. And of course, Tova finds Daphne Cassmore in the high school year book.
Questions for discussion
As I mentioned last week, this novel has a third person omniscient narrator; that is, the narrator knows what everyone is doing, saying, and thinking, including the octopus.
In fact, it's structured around 3 independent story lines:
Tova, with friends among the KnitWits, Ethan, the Scottish shop owner, Terry, her boss at the aquarium
Cameron, with ex-girl friend Katie at the beginning of the novel, then Avery, paddle shop owner, his childhood friends Elizabeth and Brad, now married and expecting a baby. As the novel progresses, he meets Ethan, then Terry, and finally Tova.
Marcellus, no friends of his own species, acquaintances, maybe, with people. Tova is the only human character he interacts with.
Structurally, the novel moves, with alternating chapters, from one story line to another, back and forth. The first two story lines—Tova, Cameron—thread together as the novel progresses, with of course an interesting, and happy, resolution.
How do these story lines come together?
Questions for discussion
Who is Marcellus? How does he function in this novel?
Interview: Los Angeles Public Library
What is the question that you’re always hoping you’ll be asked, but never have been? What is your answer?
I’m surprised I’ve never been asked, not directly anyway, why Marcellus doesn’t just leave the aquarium. Especially since one of the most well-known-on-the-internet octopus escape artists, the infamous Inky from New Zealand, does exactly that. Finds a drain. Goes home.
And the answer, of course, is that Marcellus is afraid of change, just like the rest of the characters in the book. In earlier drafts, I had him ruminating on the possibility of escaping in a more direct way, but I ended up cutting those sections back because I don’t think he’s quite self-aware enough to realize that he feels that way. It’s one of the things that lets us, as humans, find common ground with him, I think.
Interview—Seattle Times
About Marcellus:
a video that went viral from the Seattle Aquarium where there was an octopus that was trying to get out of this tank thought that would be a really fun character to write, and I started hearing the voice in my head that was very snarky and exasperated.
A short time after that, I was in this writing class, the first writing class I’ve ever taken. The teacher gave us a writing exercise to write from an unusual point of view.
And I thought, I’m gonna be that octopus and talk about how frustrated I am at these silly humans that are such an inferior species, and here I am the one that’s contained. That ended up becoming the first chapter of the book.
The octopus gives us this lens with which we can look at ourselves with a bit more distance and a bit more clarity.
Questions for discussion
Confined, rectangular spaces are a motif in this novel, beginning with the box of keepsakes from his mother that Aunt Jeanne gives Cameron when he leaves.
What other enclosed spaces are important in this novel?
Crossword puzzles
Space beneath the floor boards in Erik's old room
Animal "prisons"
Tova's house
Others
Are they a metaphor for a frame of mind?
Questions for discussion
Keepsakes are important in this novel as well—like the things Tova was stored in the attic—linens, her 5 wooden Dala horses. And Ethan has a record collection, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and Barb has a room full of elephant collectibles.
What do they represent?
Questions for discussion
What's the significance of the cat that "adopts" Tova? And her reception of this cat when it just "shows up" on her porch?
Breakout room question
In the trailer for "My Octopus Teacher" on Netflix https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12888462/ the narrator says:
"I realized I was changing. My relationship with people, with humans, was changing.
What she [the octopus] taught me was to feel that you're part of this place, not just a visitor.
That's a huge difference."
To quote from Kristin Hannah's novel, The Nightingale:
"I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired.
Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known."
Does the first quote explain why women are writing about animals?
Interview—Seattle Times
About Tova:
But she has this bigger grief, which is really a grief of unknowns; of her son who had disappeared, and she never had any closure. She can’t move on from it, because she doesn’t know what happened.
And part of what I think stops her from being able to know is this fact that she is so closed off and receded into her own life, and unwilling to fully participate in her community. It’s really when she starts doing that that the information starts coming out. When she opens herself up to new experiences of meeting new people and being a little bit more of a full participant in her social circle, she is kind of rewarded with some additional facts that in the end help her get some closure.
Interview—Seattle Times
I think it [the pandemic] affected a lot, looking back on it now. There is a really interesting parallel between writing about characters that are stuck at a time when a lot of people I know were physically stuck, standing at our windows looking out on the world and feeling like we didn’t know when we were going to be able to go back out there again, if we were ever going to be able to go back out there again. I think the themes of stuckness probably intensified due to it being this very unique time in all of our lives.
On the flip side, I feel like the other big thing that came out of writing a book during the pandemic is that it’s a really happy book. In spite of all these themes of grief and disconnection and being stuck, it’s a very joyful story at the end of the day.
Los Angeles Public Library—interview
[Remarkably Bright Creatures] . . . does feature an unusual narrator. And like Remarkably Bright Creatures, it deals with characters who are kind of stuck within their own misbeliefs about themselves, in need of connection and community—and closure, for unanswered questions from the past. It’s a very different setting, though, and although I really do miss spending my days with Marcellus and Tova, it’s been fun getting to know this new cast of characters!
Powell's interview
Describing Tova:
She was this tiny Swedish lady who was so sweet and loving, yet also wore this stoic shell around her.
Everything was always just fine, and she was constantly finding something to do, almost as if staying in motion could ward off any ill. [She] stays in perpetual motion, like a fish circling an aquarium, but in this case, to outpace their own grief.
My writing also centers around themes of loneliness and belonging, this book included. Most of my characters are sort of stuck in their own solitary orbits, resigned to inevitable outcomes, not realizing that if only they could connect with one another, life would be richer. But to do that, they must put themselves out there, get vulnerable and uncomfortable.
Questions for discussion
The ring in that box of keepsakes—a man's high school ring--is the beginning of Cameron's attempt to solve the puzzle of his parents, specifically his father, whom he's never known. The ring is folded inside a photo, with the caption: Daphne Cassmore and Simon Brinks. Thus Cameron's search begins.
Tova's began with "Erik was seeing a girl."
Pieces of the puzzle
The engraving in the ring is EELS, which Cameron thinks initially is some kind of high school theme or mascot until he meets with Simon, learns that Simon was just Daphne's good friend and not his father. He also knows the engraving is initials; he shows Cameron his ring.
Angry when he returns to the aquarium, Cameron throws the ring into the wolf eels tank.
But Marcellus knows the significance of the ring, retrieves is, and leaves it on the floor for Tova when she comes it. She recognizes it as her son's—Erik Ernest Lindgren Sullivan. She gives it to Cameron when he comes back from the aborted trip to California. His father is Erik, Tova's son.
Marcellus also swipes Cameron's driver's license, with full name and date of birth, and leaves it for Tova to find under the tail of the sea lion statue, although by doing so he risks The Consequences
Pieces of the puzzle
Avery remembers talking a woman down from the pier where she apparently plans to commit suicide, talking about a "boom." Avery thought she was referring to an explosion, maybe had a military background, but Tova realizes it's the boat's boom, which swung and struck Erik, tossing him in the water to drown. So Avery saved Daphne.
Quotes—from Marcellus
Humans, for the most part, you are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures.”
““It seems to be a hallmark of the human species: abysmal communication skills. Not that any other species are much better, mind you, but even a herring can tell which way the school it belongs to is turning and follow accordingly. Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”
“Secrets are everywhere. Some humans are crammed full of them. How do they not explode? It seems to be a hallmark of the human species: abysmal communication skills."
“As a general rule, I like holes. A hole at the top of my tank gives me freedom. But I do not like the hole in her heart. She only has one, not three, like me. Tova’s heart. I will do everything I can to help her fill it.”
Quotes—about Tova
“Tova wonders sometimes if it’s better that way, to have one’s tragedies clustered together, to make good use of the existing rawness. Get it over with in one shot. Tova knew there was a bottom to those depths of despair. Once your soul was soaked though with grief, any more simply ran off, overflowed, the way maple syrup on Saturday-morning pancakes always cascaded onto the table whenever Erik was allowed to pour it himself.”Tova knew there was a bottom to those depths of despair. Once your soul was soaked through with grief, any more simply ran off, overflowed, the way maple syrup on Saturday morning pancakes always cascaded onto the table whenever Erik was allowed to pour it on himself.”
“Some trees aren’t meant to sprout tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying.”
“She understands what it means to never be able to stop moving, lest you find yourself unable to breathe.”
Final thoughts
What interested me about this book:
Marcellus—an unusual character, not exactly anthropomorphic—he's not integrated into any society—human or animal—he simply moves into Tova's to help her solve the riddle of what happened to her son. In Perestroika, the animals create a community among themselves; that doesn't happen here.
It's not a big point in the novel, but he knows the location in the ocean where her son's bones lie. He goes back there when Tova frees him at the end.
Given his octopus intelligence, he knows that Tova and Cameron are related. In a side item, he notes that the child visiting the aquarium is not the father's son; in fact he says the father is a cuckold.
Marcellus also functions, a little bit, like a Greek chorus, or a deus ex machina, again from ancient Greek tragedy. Those are rarely used literary tropes.
Finally I think this is another example of women authors expanding their perspective on the human community. Instead of winners and losers in a hierarchical, patriarchal, rigidly structured system, we find a more organic, inclusive, tolerant community of creatures attempting to understand one another and live cooperatively.
Next Week:
The Man Who Died Twice
Richard Osman