I first read Remarkable Creatures several years ago while researching books for a blog post on Women Scientists in Novels. It features two women fossil hunters in the small English seaside town of Lyme Regis in the early 1800’s. When I read it again to prepare this review, I enjoyed it all over again.

The novel is based on two real women fossil hunters: Mary Anning (a working-class woman who discovered complete skeletons of ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and other ancient animals) and Elizabeth Philpot (an upper-class woman who is known for her collection of fossil fish). Chevalier used their real friendship as a basis of her story, including actual details such as the fact that Mary survived a lightning strike as a baby. The story is told in alternating chapters from the first-person points of view of Mary and Elizabeth.

After the death of her father, 11-year-old Mary and her family struggle to make a living by finding and selling “curies” (fossils, which were called “curiosities”) to tourists. Mary is especially good at spotting fossils. Elizabeth, a grown woman, moves with her sisters to Lyme Regis from London in order to live within the means of their inheritance, and she develops an interest in the fossils littering the beach. Despite the difference in age and social class, the two become close friends based on their shared interest in fossils. The novel follows them for several years, as Mary grows up and Elizabeth grows older.

Conflicts arise around religion (is the universe much older than the Bible suggests?); gender roles (men collectors often buy from Mary and then pass off the skeletons and fossils as their own); marriage vs. spinsterhood (Mary falls in love with an upper-class collector and hopes to avoid the stigma of being a spinster like Elizabeth); and science (are Mary’s bizarre skeletons truly creatures from another era, or are they hoaxes?).

Chevalier does a great job of evoking the small, hilly town of Lyme Regis and its fossil-strewn cliffs and beaches. Here is Elizabeth’s first description of the beach where she will spend so much time:

It is as if there are two villages side by side, connected by a small sandy beach, where the bathing machines are lined up, awaiting an influx of visitors. The other Lyme, at the west end of the beach, doesn’t shun, but embraces the sea. It is dominated by the Cobb, a long gray stone wall that curves like a finger out into the water and shelters the shore, creating a tranquil harbor for the fishing boats and trading ships that come from all over. The Cobb is several feet high, and wide enough for three to walk along arm in arm, which many visitors do, for it gives a fine view back to the town and the dramatic shoreline beyond of rolling hills and cliffs in green, gray, and brown. (p. 13)

Chevalier used real names throughout the book, and this caused me some confusion, because many of the men have names that start with “B” (Bullock, Birch, Buckland) and I had trouble keeping them apart.

Remarkable Creatures would be a good companion read to Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which takes place in the same time period, and one section of which is set in Lyme Regis. I love Jane Austen’s novels. However, it is certainly refreshing to read about women of that era who are not fixated on marriage, but are devoted to their own interests and their own work.