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    Remarkable Creatures
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    Remarkable Creatures
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    Remarkable Creatures
    Audiobook10 hours

    Remarkable Creatures

    Written by Tracy Chevalier

    Narrated by Charlotte Parry

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A voyage of discovery, two remarkable women, and an extraordinary time and place enrich this New York Times bestselling novel by Tracy Chevalier, author of At the Edge of the Orchard and Girl With a Pearl Earring. 

    On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, poor and uneducated Mary Anning learns that she has a unique gift: "the eye" to spot fossils no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip, and the scientific world alight. After enduring bitter cold, thunderstorms, and landslips, her challenges only grow when she falls in love with an impossible man.

    Mary soon finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who shares her passion for scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy, but ultimately turns out to be their greatest asset.

    Remarkable Creatures is a stunning historical novel that follows the story of two extraordinary 19th century fossil hunters who changed the scientific world forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 5, 2010
    ISBN9781101154458
    Unavailable
    Remarkable Creatures
    Author

    Tracy Chevalier

    Tracy Chevalier is the author of eleven novels, including A Single Thread, Remarkable Creatures and Girl with a Pearl Earring, an international bestseller that has sold over five million copies and been made into a film, a play and an opera. Born in Washington DC, she moved to the United Kingdom in 1986. She and her husband divide their time between London and Dorset.

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    Reviews for Remarkable Creatures

    4/5

    1,072 ratings140 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a novel based on the life of Lyme Regis fossil hunter Mary Anning. It brings over quite well the precariousness of her family's circumstances, completely dependent on Mary's finding of her "curies" on the beach. Chapters are told alternately from the points of view of Mary and her lifelong friend and fellow fossil hunter, Elizabeth Philpot, who came from a higher social class - an unusual friendship for the time, founded on their passion for pushing forward the boundaries of geological and biological knowledge of the times, an occupation frowned on, given their gender. While mostly based on the true events of their lives, it does introduce a romantic element and a cause for jealousy between the two women, which doesn't really add to the story. A good read about a remarkable pair of early female pioneers in the sciences (though neither they nor their contemporaries would have described them as such).
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable and quick read about female fossil hunters in the 19th century in the UK. Not a bit of history I knew nor how fossils were a threat to religious belief of the time.
    • 4/5
      I would not have minded extra 200 pages about Mary's adult working life. I felt like too much of the book was dedicated to hers and Elizabeth's younger days and too few was written about their adult life. A very enjoyable read overall, especially if you are interested in the subject.
    • 5/5
      Great book - factual and inspirational - having been to Lyme, walked on the cliffs and bought a fossil ammonite - reading more about Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpott was an enjoyable weekend read.
    • 3/5
      Remarkable Creatures is a book about the ways that society changes and stays the same. It is about friendship, and being your true self, and doing what you love. It feels like a biography, but reads beautifully like a story. It is a fairly short read, but I enjoyed it for it's history, it's portrait of friendship, and messages.
    • 5/5
      Based on real incidents, Chevalier weaves an absorbing tale about the discovery of ground-breaking fossils in Lyme Regis, England. Though marginalized in history books, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot dug up these remarkable remnants of a era that was considered nonexistent at the time and shook up religious views at an unthinkable pace. These two women of two classes of society team together also in a way that helps break men's hold on science. Though I am only slightly interested in natural history, I was entranced by these retelling of another era.
    • 3/5
      What an absolutely charming story. I really love reading accounts, even fictional, about women throughout history. These two "remarkable creatures" were ahead of their time and place - as so many others. Their courage and endurance are still lessons for modern women.
    • 4/5
      This is the second novel I have read about the fossil hunter Mary Anning. The other was Curiosity by Joan Thomas. If you want to only read one book about this woman then I would recommend this book over Curiosity which was rambling and unfinished as far as I was concerned.Mary Anning was a poor girl raised in Lyme Regis on the shore of the English Channel. The cliffs and beaches around Lyme Regis were known for being a good source of fossils and the whole Anning family hunted for fossils which they sold to tourists. Then Mary Anning's brother found the remains of a much larger creature than anything that had been found before. By this time three Philpot sisters were living in Lyme Regis, having had to find somewhere more reasonable to live once their parents died and they were left with an income of 150 pounds per annum. Elizabeth Philpot had befriended Mary as she was also interested in fossils. Elizabeth loaned the money to hire two quarry workers to extract the rock containing the creature from the cliff. Mary cleaned it up and it was sold to the local lord. Mary became obsessed with finding more of these creatures and went on to find quite a few which were classified as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterodactyls. These discoveries rocked the established thought about the creation and age of the earth and lead to profound changes in geology, religion and science in general. Mary did not initially get much acknowledgement as the finder of the creatures but eventually her name became known and celebrated. Elizabeth Philpot, as a collector of fossil fish, was acknowledged by the British Museum when she donated some specimens but as a woman she could not join the Geological Society. Women were still second class citizens throughout this period.I really enjoyed some of the details that Chevalier included in the book that showed the state of society at the time. There was a rigid class system and Mary was decidedly lower class. In a small town like Lyme Regis she and the Philpots could interact in public but they would never entertain each other. Mary could not enter the Assembly Rooms where the upper classes danced and played cards. Mary could dream of marrying one of the gentlemen that came to hunt fossils but it could never happen. The quality of her discoveries was so astonishing that she was eventually able to transcend the class barriers.
    • 4/5
      3.75 starsIt is the early 1800s. Elizabeth is a 25-year old middle-class spinster, who moves from London to Lyme Regis with her two sisters. She quickly becomes friends with 5-year old, Mary, who helps Elizabeth foster a love of collecting fossils. As Mary grows up, she is able to find more and more and better and better fossils, but things start to change as men hear about her finds and arrive to do their own fossil-hunting. Although this one started off slowly for me, I did quite enjoy it. It did pick up in the second half, as Mary got older, I thought, and I was very interested to discover that both Mary and Elizabeth were real people, as were the majority of the people in the book.
    • 4/5
      Remarkable Creatures is a quietly encompassing book with many messages from the early 19th century.Starting with Mary Anning and her lightning strike and ending with recognition of her astonishing contributions to geology, evolution, dinosaurs, history, and the importance, thanks to her courage, of women in science and life.It offers the best of historical fiction by inspiring research into the truths of what actually happened.And, while the author details the inner life of Elizabeth Philpot, readers may wish for more, however imagined,of what Mary Anning was thinking and feeling during all those day and night hours on the beachesand in her workshop. Her sharp tongued Mam offers contrasts of reason, yet it is her father, Richard Anning,whose presence would have been so welcome. Where her brother gives an understandable balance,it would have been a joy to listen to her father speak and challenge the Colonel and the variousMen of Science.
    • 4/5
      A fictional account of the life of Mary Anning told from the perspective of herself and friend, Elizabeth Philpot. Mary Anning was a early 19th century fossil finder and paleontologist in a male-dominated culture. As always, Tracy Chevalier is a delight to read involving women who overcome oppression to survive and blossom.
    • 3/5
      This book is a fictionlized story of the life of a real woman named Mary Anning who discovered several dinosaur fossils. Several of the characters, including the other main character, Elizabeth Philpot, were all real people. The story basically gives a possibility of the life of a poor working girl (Mary) who from a very early age loved the 'curies' that she and her father found on the beach. As she got older, the fossils became a way to earn an income for her family. Elizabeth, an aging spinster who also loves natural history and fossils becomes friends with Mary and they would hunt together. It was Elizabeth who basically did what she could to get Mary credit for her findings during a time when women in the academic circle was unheard of.

      Overall I found the story intriguing. There was some science, some hardships, some drama, and some romance.
    • 4/5
      As a young girl, I collected fossils and loved the science of paleontology, so this novel resonated deeply with me. Chevalier's portrayal of the prejudice against women in this (and many scientific endeavours) was spot on. Her characterization was excellent.
    • 3/5
      A enjoyable read for me as I live in the area where the story is set. Although it is fiction the story is based around real life historical characters most notably Mary Anning a 19th century fossil hunter. Perfect for a summers day in the sunshine or a Lyme Regis beach read - and I learned a little bit about my local history and fossils too.
    • 4/5
      Based upon the real life fossil collectors Mary Anning, which there is much written on, and Elizabeth Philpot which little is written on. Chevalier did her homework and spun an entertaining tale that one could hold on to as a possible way it happened story. But Chevalier never made any claims to say 'this is how it happened' rather to take the historic facts of a remarkable woman (Anning) and create a story around her. Not much different than her Girl with Pearl Earring. In the end it was an easy, enjoyable story that made you root for the women (Anning and Philpot), angry with early 19th century chauvinism and think about how much life is lost when a few bad words shared between friends make for years of lost time. Makes you think about some of the words you've said and regretted over the years that only provided you a moment of self fulfillment and a lifetime of regret.
    • 4/5
      Interesting, educational and well written.
    • 4/5
      A charming historical novel about a young woman who hunts fossils, and the cast of characters that surround her. The story is early 19th century, prior to Darwin, while society was still struggling to understand what fossils were, and resisted the idea that they were extinct creatures, because it cast doubt on the goodness of the creation. The author gives the characters a chance to voice differing philosophies, without stepping out of the bounds of what ideas might have been floated then. She doesn't move into modern explanations, or have some character with magical prescience to predict what we will later know. They are groping in the dark, trying to comprehend the 'monsters' they are finding in the rocks, while also coping with the rigid class system and stern personal morality of the time. The total invisibility of women in this world, and the lack of acceptance of them as intelligent players, is heightened by focusing on the story of two women who hunted fossils together, their names left off the labels of museum specimens, or replaced with the names of the men who purchased the fossils from them. The tensions between the clashing worldviews, the stress of rapidly changing times, and the age-old emotions of love, hatred, jealousy, and friendship are nicely drawn out. The story is told in first person from the pov of the two main characters; this does make it a bit disconcerting at first, until you figure out that the chapters alternate. The difference in the grammar and style of the two characters does make it a bit easier to know who you are reading once you get used to the format, but a bit of guidance might have helped a bit. Overall, an enjoyable read, and it can read either as astute historical fiction or as light reading for those who don't want to think about the deeper meanings.
    • 4/5
      This is the fictionalized story of two women fossil collector on the southern coast of England, their personal relationship and their connection to the science of the time.
    • 2/5
      In the early 19th century, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot scour the cliffs and beaches of Lyme Regis for fossils. Both women make discoveries that change the world.This tale is about two women who I knew nothing about. Tracy Chevalier does do an excellent job of bringing the era to life. Her descriptions always give a good sense of time and place. Told alternatively by Elizabeth and Mary the story tells of both their fortunes and misfortunes. The narrative of Mary was my favourite out of the two.I have read books by TC before and I either love them ( Virgin Blue, Falling Angels, Burning Bright,Lady and the Unicorn) or I don't enjoy them so much ( At the End of the Orchard, Girl with the Pearl Earring). This book falls into the not so much. Although I loved the descriptions and found the two women fascinating I felt the book was boring. Not at first, I was enjoying it but I did become very bored. I will seek out further work by Tracy Chevalier but this offering is not one of my favourites.
    • 4/5
      I had no idea anyone named Mary Annings or Elizabeth Philpot even existed. Now I want to find out more about the real people. In this novel these two women, from completely different backgrounds, who share the same passion, form a deep friendship in an era when it was completely improper for women to hunt for fossils and be interested in anything other than trying to secure a husband. A most enjoyable read!
    • 4/5
      A good historical novel. Chevalier makes the world of 19th-century England come alive while chronicling the life of fossil hunter Mary Anning. This is history, paleontology, a look at cultural customs and a touching story of friendship.
    • 4/5
      Lyme Regis, Dorset; c.1805-c1825. Mary Anning is a fossil hunter - but as a working class girl her life is dominated by the need to put food on the family table, and she's largely ignored by the scientific establishment. Elizabeth Philpot, a middle class spinster of some education, fares a little better, but even so her life and fossil-hunting are circumscribed by the constraints imposed on her sex. The two women tell their stories in alternating chapters, sometimes overlapping, sometimes leaving much unsaid as they recount some twenty years' worth of memories. They speak of their friendship and their work. They describe their struggle to understand what the fossils are and how they fit with the account of creation they have been taught. They recount their battles with the scientific establishment and with the expectations of their families. They demonstrate just how much of a gentleman's club some areas of science were in the nineteenth century, and how much consternation there was over these discoveries.These two women come alive in the pages of this novel, and it is a pleasure to read their stories. Chevalier's postscript sets out which parts of her narrative are taken from known history and which are her own speculation, and she also provides a short list of further reading about these fascinating women whose contributions to the science of geology were overlooked in their own day.
    • 4/5
      Chevalier has written a remarkable book about two remarkable women, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. These were real women who lived in the same era as Jane Austen. What made them unique was their occupation as fossil hunters. While Elizabeth did it as a hobby, Mary Anning actually made a living hunting fossils on the beach at Lyme-Regis. She made some major discoveries of the fossils of extinct creatures. The public's reactions to these discoveries form the major plot of the book as their discovery shook many people to the core of their being. This is a very enjoyable book that provides a perspective into a little-considered topic from a bygone era.
    • 4/5
      Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot are fossil hunters. In the 1800's though, people didn't recognize fossils for what they were, and women were not considered capable of scientific discovery and reasoning.
    • 5/5
      Tracy Chevalier is one of my favorite authors and she completely lives up to expectations with this novel. I had no knowledge of this story before reading it and I was hooked from the first page. Strong female characters who actually existed and left a legacy behind. Fabulous.
    • 5/5
      When I started this book I wasn't sure it would be a page turner because it was about fossils. Chevalier has taken a true story of a woman never addressed in our history or science books when I was growing up. She found first ichthyosaur skeleton to be correctly identified. I would recommend this to everyone. Chevalier is a great writer who knows how to tell a story.
    • 2/5
      adult fiction. Seems ok, I just have too many audio to listen to right now, and this is among the least exciting.
    • 3/5
      A nice story with thread of feminism throughout. I thought the prose was simple, leaving me wanting a more literary reading experience. I think this is more of a YA read.
    • 5/5
      Tracy Chevalier is one of those authors that people ask me if I've read, who pop up on recommendation lists, who generally seem very popular despite seeming a bit literary, who sounds like someone I should like, and therefore, contrarily, I've never read. I picked this up in the library and fully expected to put it down by page 20 and send it back unread.Of course I didn't do that, I loved it.Set in Lyme Regis in the early nineteenth century this is the story of the friendship between Mary Anning, a young fossil hunter from the working classes, and Elizabeth Philpot, a slightly older fossil hunter from the upper classes. I knew that Mary Anning was a real historical figure as I knew of her from visits to Lyme, I was surprised to find that Miss Elizabeth was also drawn from life - the fossil museum in Lyme Regis is the Philpot Museum apparently, I didn't remember that. It's a great story about the relationships between the classes at the time of Austen. Mary and Elizabeth really shouldn't be friends; neither of them should take gentlemen fossil hunters out onto the beach with them. There is also much revealed about the relationship of Elizabeth as a slightly down at heel spinster to the higher echelons of society. And also about women in scientific circles at the time: Mary Anning is now considered to be one of the most influential British women in the history of science but few of her contemporaries saw that.I liked the book for the subject matter but it was a far smoother read than I was expecting and I'll have to try another of Chevalier's books and see if I enjoy it as much.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable historical novel from a feminist perspective of independence in the 1800's. Both main characters likeable and believable and true (I think) to their circumstances. The split narration was not bothersome as both narrators were quite good