Tracy Chevalier's new novel Remarkable Creatures* is an interesting story about two fascinating and unusual women, ardent fossil hunters Elizabeth Philpot and Mary Anning. Both women lived in Lyme Regis in the early 19th century. Elizabeth is a middle-class Londoner who moves to Lyme with her two unmarried sisters to make way for her brother's wife in London. Mary is a working-class girl, only surviving daughter of a Lyme carpenter and his wife. Chevalier focuses on their sometimes rocky, often unequal, friendship. Attendant issues, of course, are class and gender restrictions, as well as some questions of faith raised by the uncovering of the 'monsters' (the long-extinct creatures).

Elizabeth and Mary were fascinating women and this is a good introduction to their world. Elizabeth is defined by her disinterest in societal amusements and novels and her obsessive interest in fossils, her budding feminism, her half-heartedly bemoaned spinsterhood, while Mary Anning is harder to pin down. Where their interests intersect is, of course, the fossils. I liked Chevalier's Mary Anning more than her Elizabeth Philpot, but Mary remains elusive. She spends her life 'upon beach,' hunting 'curies,' is proud, hard-working, almost stereotypical in her obtuseness. And yet she's likeable, and I found myself wanting to learn more about her. And, really, this book does a great job at highlighting the role these women played (and the challenges each faced) in the early years of fossil hunting. Loyalty of sex and friendship, loyalty of mission, pride in accomplishing something that matters. These women are portrayed as very human, but undeniably heroic.

Since I have a deep and abiding interest in this time period (19th century, yay!) and a general interest in fossils (ammonites, in particular, have appeared in a poem or two) I was eager to like the novel. And I did. It's a diverting world to access for a couple of hundred pages, and these women are worth attention. There were weaknesses, though. The biggest being it was a tad cursory. I felt I was introduced to these fascinating characters, and introduced with a good amount of writerly skill, but I didn't feel as if I knew them. I feel the same way about the questions of faith and science. All in all, though, I enjoyed this novel. And what a lovely cover (love it when a cover is consistent with the tone of a novel).

Oh, and I came across this . . . the author talking about the novel:



*Much thanks to Penguin (Canada) for the review copy!