“Shelby Van Pelt has done the impossible. She’s created a perfect story with imperfect characters, that is so heartwarming, so mysterious, and so completely absorbing you won’t be able to put it down because when you’re not reading this book, you’ll be hugging it.” –Jamie Ford, author of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Any book bestie of Rachel’s is a book bestie of mine. Naturally, when the adorable Jenna Bush picked Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel Remarkably Bright Creatures, I was intrigued. The First Lady of Book Clubs’ recommendation was enough. Combined with this promise, it became a must—“For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty, and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow’s unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.
Books are a lot like people. They’re unique. They carry a whole world within them. They promise a range of emotions, which allows us to connect and relate. And they have distinct personalities. I must say, of all of the personalities in Van Pelt’s premiere, Marcellus the Octopus is the hands-down favorite. It sounds crazy to call a cephalopod charming, but that’s exactly what Marcellus is. Of course, he’s incredibly clever. And wry. A captive in the Sowell Bay Aquarium since his youth, he’s spent far too much time behind the glass getting to know predictable, sometimes quirky, mundane humans. He’s not particularly fond of our kind. But he does take lovingly to a highly productive, emotionally inscrutable seventy-year-old woman named Tova—so much so that he solves a cold case for her, one that put a lead weight on her heart for 30 years. Score one for the loveable misanthrope!