Remarkably Bright Creatures | Shelby Van Pelt | 2022 | Book Review

Remarkably Bright Creatures Book Review: Grief, Belonging and One Very Clever Octopus

An elderly cleaner and a captive octopus hardly sound like the likeliest pair around which to build a novel. Yet that unusual friendship is precisely what gives Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt its charm. What begins as a gently eccentric story set inside a small-town aquarium gradually opens into something sadder and more searching. In this Remarkably Bright Creatures book review, we explore why that unlikely pairing works so well.

This is a novel about people who have become stuck. Tova remains held in place by a question she has carried for decades. Cameron cannot stop measuring his life against everything he believes he was denied. Marcellus, meanwhile, lives behind glass and knows that his remaining time is short. Each faces a different kind of confinement, and each needs a connection that will help loosen the walls around them.

Among contemporary fiction books about grief and loss, Remarkably Bright Creatures takes an unusually warm route. It does not pretend that affection can erase sorrow. Instead, it asks whether grief and healing might exist together, and whether an unexpected sense of belonging can make an imperfect life feel livable again.

About Shelby Van Pelt

Shelby Van Pelt grew up in the Pacific Northwest and now lives in the Chicago area with her family. Before publishing her first novel, she wrote short stories and flash fiction, developing a style that combines emotional observation with dry humor.

Ecco published Remarkably Bright Creatures in 2022, and it soon became an instant New York Times bestseller. Read with Jenna chose it for its book club, while the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize later recognized its literary achievement.

Its success is easy to understand. Van Pelt gives readers a premise unusual enough to invite curiosity, then grounds it in familiar emotional territory: loneliness, family secrets, ageing, regret and the stubborn human desire to be known.

A Spoiler-Light Remarkably Bright Creatures Summary

Seventy-year-old Tova Sullivan cleans the Sowell Bay Aquarium at night. Since her husband’s death, the work has given her evenings a dependable shape. There are floors to mop, glass panels to polish and exhibits to put in order. Tova takes comfort in tasks with visible results. Human sorrow is rarely so cooperative.

More than three decades earlier, her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, disappeared during a night-time boating trip. The authorities concluded that he had died by suicide, but Tova has never quite believed them. With no body and no convincing explanation, she has spent years living beside a grief that never received a proper ending.

Her routine changes when she finds Marcellus, the aquarium’s giant Pacific octopus, outside his tank and tangled in electrical cords. Marcellus regularly slips out after closing time to explore the building and raid neighboring exhibits for snacks. Tova frees him and helps him back into the water. Neither can speak to the other, of course, but an understanding develops between them.

Marcellus narrates brief sections of the novel. He is intelligent, observant and unimpressed by most human behavior. He also knows something about Erik’s disappearance that Tova does not.

Elsewhere, 30-year-old Cameron Cassmore has lost yet another job. His mother abandoned him when he was young, and his Aunt Jeanne raised him without ever knowing his father’s identity. After discovering a few clues among his mother’s belongings, he travels from California to Sowell Bay in search of answers.

Cameron’s investigation does not unfold as expected. The journey leaves him stranded in an unfamiliar town, where he accepts work at the aquarium and slowly becomes part of Tova’s life. Their stories begin to overlap, while Marcellus watches the humans miss connections that seem perfectly obvious to him.

The resulting mystery is not especially difficult to solve. Even so, the real question is not whether readers will uncover the truth before the characters do. It is what that truth will mean to two lonely people who have spent years wondering where they belong.

What We Liked About Remarkably Bright Creatures

Any thoughtful Remarkably Bright Creatures book review must begin with Marcellus, but the novel has much more working in its favor than its unusual narrator.

Marcellus Is Far More Than a Novelty

Van Pelt could easily have used Marcellus as a gimmick: a clever animal included merely to make the book stand out on crowded shelves. Thankfully, she gives him a purpose beyond being adorable or amusing.

His chapters have a sharper edge than the rest of the novel. He records the dwindling number of days in his lifespan, complains about the limitations of captivity and studies the people around him with exasperated affection. His observations are funny because they are often accurate. Humans are careless, poor at communicating and strangely talented at overlooking what is directly in front of them.

The portrayal of octopus intelligence also lends the story a believable foundation beneath its whimsy. Marcellus recognizes individuals, remembers objects, escapes through tiny openings and solves problems that repeatedly defeat the humans. Van Pelt allows these abilities to feel remarkable without turning him into a magical creature in disguise.

Underneath his sarcasm is considerable vulnerability. Marcellus knows that he will not live much longer, and his awareness gives his attempts to help Tova an urgency she cannot perceive. Their bond is one of the novel’s most affecting unlikely friendships, made more moving by the fact that neither can explain it to anyone else.

Tova’s Grief Feels Quietly Convincing

Tova does not speak openly about her pain. Instead, she cleans and organizes. Although she attends weekly gatherings with the Knit-Wits, her circle of friends, she keeps the most difficult parts of herself tucked away.

That restraint makes her sorrow convincing. After so many years, grief has become less an event than a structure around which she has arranged her life. She is capable, proud and determined not to burden anyone. Yet her independence sometimes looks suspiciously like isolation.

Van Pelt handles Tova’s age with similar care. She neither reduces her to frailty nor turns her into an inspirational older woman who defies every limitation. Tova knows that her circumstances are changing and worries about what will happen when she can no longer manage everything alone. Those fears give the novel’s intergenerational relationships added depth. She has spent years helping others, but accepting help herself proves much harder.

Cameron’s Search Is Really About Belonging

Cameron initially believes that finding his father will repair his life. He imagines that a name, an explanation or perhaps some money will account for all his disappointments. What he actually wants is a sense of belonging, although it takes him a long time to recognize it.

His arrival in Sowell Bay places him among people who offer practical kindness without demanding that he earn it first. Ethan gives him somewhere to park his battered camper. The aquarium offers him work. Tova treats him with a mixture of patience and bluntness that he badly needs.

The novel’s treatment of found family works because these relationships grow through ordinary actions. One person offers a meal; another notices an absence. Elsewhere, someone returns after behaving badly. Van Pelt understands that such unremarkable moments often create human connection more convincingly than dramatic declarations.

The story contains a biological mystery, but Van Pelt does not present blood alone as enough. People must also recognize, maintain and choose their family relationships. That distinction prevents the resolution from feeling like a simple reward for uncovering the right family secrets.

Sorrow Never Swallows the Whole Story

Although death, abandonment and loneliness shape the plot, they rarely make the novel oppressive. Marcellus’s commentary, the aquarium escapades and Sowell Bay’s mildly nosy residents bring levity without trivializing Tova’s pain.

That balance places the novel comfortably among heartwarming books. Yet “heartwarming” does not mean shallow. Van Pelt does not offer healing as a clean escape from grief. Tova cannot recover the years she lost with Erik, just as Cameron cannot rewrite his childhood. What they receive is a chance to build something from what remains.

The result is hopeful without insisting that every wound must disappear. Sometimes second chances in life do not resemble the first chance at all.

What Could Have Been Better

Cameron is difficult to tolerate for a sizeable part of the novel. He is immature, defensive and prone to blaming other people for his lack of direction. Van Pelt intentionally gives him these flaws, but that does not always make his chapters enjoyable. Besides Tova’s quiet dignity and Marcellus’ intelligence, his self-pity can feel repetitive.

His eventual growth is satisfying, though a few earlier glimpses of self-awareness would have made the change feel smoother. As written, readers may understand his pain long before they begin to enjoy his company.

The mystery is also predictable. Once Cameron arrives in Sowell Bay and certain names and objects begin appearing, the likely connection is not hard to identify. Marcellus frequently understands the situation while the humans remain several steps behind, which can make their delay feel slightly contrived.

A few plot developments rely on coincidence, withheld information and conversations that almost happen but do not. Readers approaching the novel as a mystery may therefore find it too gentle. The emotional resolution matters far more than the surprise itself, but Van Pelt could have handled the suspense with greater subtlety.

Even with these limitations, the story retains its pull. We may know where it is heading, but we still want Tova and Cameron to arrive there.

Lines That Stayed With Us

Marcellus supplies the novel with its most memorable voice. His judgement of humanity is severe, but not entirely without hope:

Humans. For the most part, you are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures.

Elsewhere, the novel offers sterner reflections on the limits of helping another person:

You can’t fix someone who is determined to stay broken.

Perhaps the bleakest of the three quotations is also the one that most clearly captures the danger of mistaking endurance for living:

Some trees aren’t meant to sprout tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying.

Together, these lines hold the novel’s central tension. Some lives remain stuck for years, but the possibility of change never entirely disappears.

Final Verdict