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Remarkable Creatures
Remarkable Creatures
Tracy Chevalier | 2009 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I've only read one of Chevalier's previous novels and there I found her style to be extremely readable. The same is very much true of Remarkable Creatures - a title which can emcompass the fossils and the women, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpott, who find and are fascinated by them.

I suspect that most of us at one point or another have had some interest or curiousity about fossils. I admit that mine was ovbiously never a very indepth curiousity as I had never heard of any of the characters in the novel (with the obvious exception of the passing reference to Jane Austen of course!) but all the characters were real, historical figures as Chevalier explains at the end of the book.

Chevalier has evidently researched her fossils and her characters extensively for this novel, which I found impressive. The novel though it not at all dry! It was intriguing to see how the characters tried to reconcile the evidence of the fossils with that of conventional religious belief and how difficult it was for these two women to make any sort of recognised impact on the male-dominated scientific world.