Remarkably Bright Creatures

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Shelby Van Pelt: Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc)

English language

Published Nov. 11, 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

ISBN:
978-1-5266-4964-5
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Remarkably bright creatures indeed

It took me nearly 2 months to listen to the audiobook for this novel because of life happening, and I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to meet this book and its characters as they came to life in my ears.

The novel is told through several different perspectives, primarily of a 70-year-old woman, a 30-year-old man, and an octopus. There are some others, but these three are at the forefront.

The octopus, Marcellus, provides commentary on the human condition and acts kind of as the behind the scene eyes for the reader. On the other hand, the humans are constantly dealing with human style drama and coming up with or failing to come up with human style solutions.

There's a lot of good humor, but tragedy too. Reading along, I was reminded that people are complicated and we never stop growing into who we are, …

Nicely written easy read, unfulfilling plot

If you want a sense of the depth of this book, it's basically a re-imagined for adults version of Adam Sandler's "Leo" kids movie. Not sure which actually came first, but either way, neither is particularly deep and both involve lots of Deus ex Machina moments.

I got some chuckles out if it along the way, but the characters don't face any complex challenges or grow in any interesting ways other than to magically shed their flaws.

The solid writing makes it a nice casual read when there's nothing else to do?

Not what I was hoping for

  1. I wish I liked this book more. 😕
  2. I wish the story had been more about the clever octopus, and less about the boring, predictable humans and their silly "mystery." 🙄
  3. I wish the author had bothered to get her geography right. How could they drive a car from the mainland to the San Juan Islands without taking a ferry? There is no bridge to the islands. 😡
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