Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

A midlife fiction book recommendation

My chance conversation with a neighbor led to this gem of a midlife novel.

Well, maybe not midlife. A 70-year-old woman, grieving the loss of her husband and adult son, finds healing thanks to her unusual friend at the aquarium.

Tova, 70, is struggling with widowhood and the mysterious disappearance and presumed death of her adult son. Stoic and resolute, she works at the city aquarium as a cleaning woman, where she befriends Marcellus, a Giant Pacific Octopus. Marcellus is a point-of-view character in this book, and he’s so smart…if he were human, his IQ would probably be around 150. His observations about humans are spot on. Marcellus has knowledge that can mend Tova’s heart, but how to convey it without being able to speak? And he’s on a very short timeline.

Meanwhile, Cameron is a thirty-year-old failure-to-launch character. Abandoned in childhood by a mysterious father and drug addict mother, Cameron is down to his last four dollars when he gets a job filling in at the Sowell aquarium. An unlikely friendship is born, one that’ll be wrenched apart when Tova sells her house and moves north to assisted living. The clock is ticking. Will Marcellus be able to convey his news before it’s too late?

This is a compelling, smart, funny tale of lonely humans coming together. It put me in mind of the writing of Fredrik Backman (“A Man Called Ove” and “Britt-Marie Was Here”). Highly recommended. Here’s the Amazon link.