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sophia_sol) wrote2016-07-02 09:06 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2016-07-02 09:06 pm
Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier
This is a novelized account of Mary Anning's life! Super exciting, yes? For those who are not massive dinosaur nerds, Mary Anning was a working-class woman in the early 19th century who was a fossil hunter and made some pretty significant finds (including ichthyosaur and plesiosaur fossils) and had a thorough understanding of what she found, which were really important in the development of scientific thought on the history of life on earth. She was very knowledgeable and capable, but of course never seen in the same light as the educated high-class men who talked with her, studied her fossils, and published papers on them.
This book was a very enjoyable read. It's from the perspective of two women, in alternating chapters - Mary Anning, and her friend Elizabeth Philpot who was also a fossil collector.
I liked the generally female focus of the book, and how the important relationship was always the friendship between Mary and Elizabeth as opposed to with any of the men who come in and out of their lives. And I like how it legitimizes these women's interest in and role in the scientific discourse of the time.
But I also felt like it did a bit of a disservice both to the friendship and to Mary's character.
First: a goodly portion of the book takes place when Mary is a child and then a teenager, and the lonely Elizabeth who has moved to Lyme sees in Mary the possibility of a future important friendship once Mary's old enough to be an intellectual match with Elizabeth, which the narrative confirms will happen. And the end of the story is about the importance of their reconciliation, and how much Mary and Elizabeth value their friendship. But the book spends remarkably little time showing Mary and Elizabeth actually having a strong adult friendship, which weakens this relationship arc considerably. The book SAYS how important they are to each other, but we don't get to really see what this looks like in actuality in their adult lives.
And second: the book portrays Mary as pretty naive and innocent and...kinda silly, not as smart as Elizabeth, really. Mary refers to her various fossils by diminutive nicknames, for example. And she is completely deluded in the intentions of a young man she's interested in, even though after a point his (lack of) intentions are entirely clear to literally everyone else, including her hopeful mother. And her interest in her fossils seems to be almost entirely about her personal feelings towards the physical fossils and the act of fossil-hunting, as opposed to the very real scientific interest and abilities the historical Mary had.
So those aspects of the book were frustrating. But it was still overall an enjoyable work of historical fiction about women and friendship and dinosaurs and science. (I mean REALLY, any book that combines those things is bound to be worth something in my eyes!)
This book was a very enjoyable read. It's from the perspective of two women, in alternating chapters - Mary Anning, and her friend Elizabeth Philpot who was also a fossil collector.
I liked the generally female focus of the book, and how the important relationship was always the friendship between Mary and Elizabeth as opposed to with any of the men who come in and out of their lives. And I like how it legitimizes these women's interest in and role in the scientific discourse of the time.
But I also felt like it did a bit of a disservice both to the friendship and to Mary's character.
First: a goodly portion of the book takes place when Mary is a child and then a teenager, and the lonely Elizabeth who has moved to Lyme sees in Mary the possibility of a future important friendship once Mary's old enough to be an intellectual match with Elizabeth, which the narrative confirms will happen. And the end of the story is about the importance of their reconciliation, and how much Mary and Elizabeth value their friendship. But the book spends remarkably little time showing Mary and Elizabeth actually having a strong adult friendship, which weakens this relationship arc considerably. The book SAYS how important they are to each other, but we don't get to really see what this looks like in actuality in their adult lives.
And second: the book portrays Mary as pretty naive and innocent and...kinda silly, not as smart as Elizabeth, really. Mary refers to her various fossils by diminutive nicknames, for example. And she is completely deluded in the intentions of a young man she's interested in, even though after a point his (lack of) intentions are entirely clear to literally everyone else, including her hopeful mother. And her interest in her fossils seems to be almost entirely about her personal feelings towards the physical fossils and the act of fossil-hunting, as opposed to the very real scientific interest and abilities the historical Mary had.
So those aspects of the book were frustrating. But it was still overall an enjoyable work of historical fiction about women and friendship and dinosaurs and science. (I mean REALLY, any book that combines those things is bound to be worth something in my eyes!)