Mary Anning
[born 21 May 1799, died 9 Mar 1847]
An early 19th-century British fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist.
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Paperback
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| Customer Review: Tracy Chevalier once again makes another time and place come alive in "Remarkable Creatures." I'm not particularly interested in fossils, but Chevalier presents such compelling accounts of two women who were, that she made me almost as interested in ammonites, ichthyosauruses and other extinct creatures as the fossil hunters and collectors who, in the early 19th century, changed scientists' views of the age of the earth and its history.
Remarkable Creatures is told in the first person narratives of two women in Lyme-Regis, on the Southwest coast of England. Mary Anning is the poor daughter of a cabinet maker and a laundress, while Elizabeth Philpot is a spinster two decades Mary's senior. Elizabeth and her two sisters, Louise and Margaret, have just moved to Lyme-Regis, their fortunes having decreased to the point where although they are of an elevated social status, their newly married brother can no longer support them in London. Chance brings these two women from different generations and social classes together, and through their mutual love of fossils they become unlikely friends. They tell their stories in alternating chapters as they flirt with love, hunt for fossils on the desolate cliffs and beaches of the southwest coast, and struggle to find their place in a society in which they are constrained by both their gender and their social status.
Chevalier has a gift for putting the reader squarely in another time and place and making them come alive. She also has the ability to delve into the workings of a trade as she did so skillfully in The Lady and the Unicorn (weaving) and Girl With a Pearl Earring (painting), here taking us into the workings of fossil hunting and preservation. Remarkable Creatures has less romance than either of the former, which I found to be a plus, but which faithful readers of Chevalier may consider a minus. The characters feel entirely real and refreshingly complex -- there are no real heroes or villains, just everyday people, acting in accordance with the beliefs and dictates of their time. The book is well written and easy to read through in one or two sittings, but not at all dumbed down. I give it 4 1/2 stars as Chevalier has a tendency in the more romantic portions of the book to become a bit melodramatic, but thankfully, the real romantic yearnings of the characters have to do with the unstable cliffs of the coast and the remarkable creatures these two truly remarkable creatures find on them. I finished this book with a tremendous respect for what these women went through to do what they loved, and a genuine appreciation for how their work contributed to my own worldview.
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