Remarkable Creatures
Tracy Chevalier
Remarkable Creatures
From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness. When she uncovers unknown dinosaur fossils in the cliffs near her home, she sets the scientific world alight, challenging ideas about the world's creation and stimulating debate over our origins. In an arena dominated by men, however, Mary is soon reduced to a serving role, facing prejudice from the academic community, vicious gossip from neighbours, and the heartbreak of forbidden love. Even nature is a threat, throwing bitter cold, storms, and landslips at her. Luckily Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly, intelligent Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who is also fossil-obsessed. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty and barely suppressed envy. Despite their differences in age and background, Mary and Elizabeth discover that, in struggling for recognition, friendship is their strongest weapon.
4.1 out of 5 based on 5 reviews
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Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
Historical Fiction |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
|
| RRP |
£15.99 |
| Date of Publication |
August 2009 |
| ISBN |
978-0007178377 |
| Publisher |
HarperCollins |
| |
From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness. When she uncovers unknown dinosaur fossils in the cliffs near her home, she sets the scientific world alight, challenging ideas about the world's creation and stimulating debate over our origins. In an arena dominated by men, however, Mary is soon reduced to a serving role, facing prejudice from the academic community, vicious gossip from neighbours, and the heartbreak of forbidden love. Even nature is a threat, throwing bitter cold, storms, and landslips at her. Luckily Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly, intelligent Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who is also fossil-obsessed. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty and barely suppressed envy. Despite their differences in age and background, Mary and Elizabeth discover that, in struggling for recognition, friendship is their strongest weapon.
Reviews
The Evening Standard
Geoffrey Carr
“[Reviewed with ‘The Fossil Hunter’ by Shelley Emling] Of the two books Remarkable Creatures is by far the better read... It is not and does not aim to be a “life” of its subject but it conveys a plausible sense both of Anning the person and of the temper of the times.”
28/08/2009
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The Financial Times
Monique Roffey
“Though the narrative is prone to large chunks of exposition, Remarkable Creatures is a largely enjoyable book, despite being, at times, unashamedly romantic... Chevalier excavates her two main characters with great confidence and wit. These women, neither of whom I had heard of before, become vivid and engrossing. ”
31/08/2009
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The Guardian
Ruth Padel
“It is a stunning story, compassionately reimagined... The ways in which Mary and Elizabeth regard each other over the years allows the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring to do what she excels at: reveal slowly, in meticulous period detail, not one but two women being looked at.”
29/08/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Gabriel Weston
“Her descriptions of Lyme Regis and its coastline are alive with physical detail... Reading this book, I felt I was alongside Mary and Elizabeth on their fossilling missions, doing something not just brainy, but dirty and dangerous, too... On the down side, Chevalier’s tone occasionally teeters into sentimentality... [A] very entertaining book”
24/08/2009
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The Sunday Times
Nick Rennison
“Thoroughly absorbing... Remarkable Creatures is not without its faults. Some of the secondary characters possess little vitality and seem to exist on the page solely in order to embody certain ideas of the time that Chevalier wants to bring to our attention... However, Chevalier has taken the true histories of Anning and Philpot and fashioned from them a moving story of the resilience of an unusual female friendship and of ground shifting beneath people’s feet as new discoveries force them to look at the world with fresh eyes.”
13/09/2009
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