Review: Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

Have you noticed how children like to chat to you when you’re standing at the kitchen sink up to your elbows in bubbles? This was one of those intimate occasions when I was audience and confidante.

My granddaughter asked me if  I knew about a little girl called Mary Anning, who had been struck by lightning as a baby, and then grew up to find the first dinosaur?  And… did I know … that she’d lived in Lyme Regis...?  She then told me about her geography trip to hunt for fossils on the same beach on which Mary Anning had found some, and … (huge breath) … an enormous dinosaur!  Her eyes were alight with excitement and curiosity.  Surely her Nana could never know these facts… only children of a certain age would understand.

That day, when we swopped knowledge, I gained credence as a Nana who knew everything worth knowing.  Whilst basking in our togetherness, I silently thanked Tracy Chevalier for writing her brilliant book Remarkable Creatures.

To me Tracy is a remarkable author. She can take an interesting historical fact, and with her fertile imagination weave a story, using believable characters and situations, to fit exactly that factual time and place.  A remarkable talent indeed, as you’ll see…

Remarkable Creatures

From the moment Mary Anning survives being struck by lightning as a baby, she has an energy and curiosity which appears unusual.  She knows she is different.  From a poor background with hunger a regular visitor in their home, selling the curies she finds on the beach just about keeps them alive. 

At that time a spinster lady comes to Lyme Regis with her unmarried sisters.  Through their characters, life in Lyme at that time is revealed. Our author weaves the trials and tribulations of husband-hunting into the social life in Lyme Regis and London in the mid-1800s. The status of the unmarried daughter or sister, is not a happy one.   Elizabeth Philpot needed a hobby whilst waiting for a potential husband to come along, and makes the most of what life has bestowed on her. An intelligent woman who sees interesting potential in fossils, she becomes a respected collector with a enviable collection of ‘fishes’.

Mary, a young girl, already a committed fossil hunter, and her family find life hard. Landslips and storms are foes for Mary and Elizabeth to overcome. Friendships, jealousy and misinterpretation of the truth feature in this story, keeping the reader engaged with all these lives. Mary also experiences longing and disappointment with the man she loves.  Neither of these women marry the man of their desires.


Remarkable Creatures is fiction, but many of the characters in this specialised field did exist. The French almost claimed credit for this phenomenal discovery for themselves. It was indeed hard, nay impossible, for women making scientific discoveries at that time to gain their due recognition, as it was believed they lacked the intellectual rigour to engage in scientific study.  The Geological Society did not accept female Fellows until 1919.   Our author, through the experiences of her characters, has shown how difficult it was for Mary to achieve recognition. Elizabeth was her friend, her ally and through her defiant hard work, gained the due respect and reputation for Mary that we accept today.
I won’t spoil your enjoyment of this novel by going into the depths of detail and intrigue, but I would hugely recommend it to anyone who enjoys well researched facts imaginatively spun into an unable-to-put-down novel.

Since reading this book I have become an ardent fan of Tracy’s writing.  After reading Girl with the Pearl Earring; a story woven around the life of the Dutch artist Vermeer, I have recently read her latest novel The Runaway.  Once you have found this brilliant writer who, for a lot of the year, is based in Dorset which has become a continuing inspiration for her writing, you’ll become hungry for her next literary offering.

Tracy Chevalier was the novel category judge for the 2013 Yeovil Literary Prize.  It was a pleasure and privilege to work with her.


Liz Pike is Secretary of the Yeovil Community Arts Association.  She is also a member of the Yeovil Cre8ive Writers and Yeovil Art Group.    The YCAA administers the annual, international writing competition The Yeovil Literary Prize. Liz is passionate about the written word, having had success writing short stories, and enjoys two reading groups, one of which is the YCAA Lunchtime Book Group.

Review: Happy Deathday by Sue Yockney

Once I started reading ‘Happy Deathday’ I couldn’t put it down. The story is as immediate as the throttle response of a Lamborghini. Too many books boast a great story but fail to excite the reader in the first few pages but ‘Happy Deathday’ does what it promises.

For those who aren’t familiar, the novel takes place in a breeding colony deep underground after a gamma ray explosion destroys the earth’s ozone layer and mankind is near extinction. In this vast underground fortress, one human is born every day and one dies every day. This is their destiny… or so what they are told.

What interested me about the book is the breeding colony itself, good dystopias must have a setting that take your breath away, settings that make you shake your head and whisper, ‘whoa…’. The colony, or the city has no name and that’s OK, its nameless setting provokes thought in the brainbox and when you start to imagine how this colony was built and how everything works, it’s a lot to take in. Happily, Sue Yockney doesn’t explain how the colony was designed or what components go into what which of course would make for boring backstory. Instead, she describes the main places of interest where the reader is such as the Museum & Archive building or the SRU Headquarters. The whole book has a whiff of ‘Brave New World’ which I like a lot but it’s the young adult cast that steals the show.

The dystopian setting must always be a character in itself in these sort of books, but the cast themselves must be equally as impressive. Meet Jonathan and Sarah, the two protagonists. They are both eighteen and when Jonathan forgets to take his Supplement, what he thinks are healthy tablets, he begins to experience the signs of puberty and therein lies the love story. Not only does the book handle a well thought out story and setting but it’s is dual-narrative, not something I’ve ever read before. The short and snappy chapters rotate between Jonathan and Sarah and sometimes you get two perspectives of one scene which makes for excellent reading.

‘Happy Deathday’ is a love story set in a dystopian world. You may say that Sue Yockney has injected some ‘Nineteen-Eighty Four’ in the book with all the secrecy behind their meetings in a colony under constant surveillance but ‘Happy Deathday’ also has a love triangle, the third being the SRU leader, Zack. His character is easy to dislike and what’s great about these three characters is that they show so much of the teenage naivety that many of us have probably gone through. When there’s a girl in the picture, boys tend to think irrationally and muddy their own personalities and Jonathan is just such a boy. When Sarah’s mad, he’s not quite sure what to do and Zack displays the telltale signs of a jealous bully who must have his own way. Jonathan and Sarah begin to peel away a deeper understanding of Zack’s obsession of Sarah and there are many times when the two protagonists stumble into ‘Scooby-Doo’ territory when they don their detective caps, the quote, ‘those meddling kids!’ popped into my head a few times, which isn’t a bad thing at all.

If there was one negative point, I’d say that the dialogue lacked a bit of brutality. More than once a punchy, sinister line could make a scene and for me at least, I was left waiting for the breakpoint. It might be because the dystopias and sci-fi novels I’ve read were designed for adults so edgy dialogue would be expected but despite that, the tense moments are still thrilling, and I’m not even a fan of romance!

To sum up then, ‘Happy Deathday’ is something quite special. If you’ve read ‘Brave New World’, I think you’ll spot the faint resemblance which is good. This book has an idea I’m sure many readers will face-palm and say ‘why didn’t I think of that!’ The characters are outstanding, characters you can picture and people you can root for even if you don’t like them, they were probably the characters you weren’t supposed to. And isn’t that what characters should do anyway? The underground city is a great place to be (in the book at least!) and the questions it presents about human preservation and teenage anxieties are relevant today, poignant and demanding of answers. Quality read.


Nick Barton is a YA writer on a quest to finish every book on his never-ending list of books to read. When he’s not playing Skyrim, he’s either writing new stories or editing a YA novel in the hopes to have it published sometime in 2014. He blogs and posts book reviews on nickbartonauthor.co.uk

Book Launch: Dandelion Clocks by Rebecca Westcott

Yesterday was World Book Day and I headed to the pretty town of Mere, just over the border in Wiltshire, for the launch of Dorset author Rebecca Westcott’s debut children’s novel Dandelion Clocks.

Here’s what it says in the blurb – and isn’t the cover superb!:

Liv takes us on a journey through her life from "Thirteen Weeks Before" to "Six Months After". We discover Liv's passion for photography, her brother's obsession with sticking to the rules, the stupidity of Moronic Louise at school, and how the family copes as Mum's terminal illness takes hold...Guided by Mum's own childhood diaries, Liv finds a new way to live.

The launch was held at Mere School and, being World Book Day the children, and teachers, were all dressed up as characters from their favourite books. We passed a class where a werewolf was standing outside, releasing children to their parents, and followed a group of Hogwarts pupils round to a crammed school hall, everyone jostling round the book stall and waiting for Rebecca to speak.

Which of course she did, and then she read out a passage from the book. Then the children performed for us, singing a wonderful medley of songs. They were absolutely brilliant and brought a tear to my eye! Such a credit to their school. Prizes were given out to the kids for a variety of things from best costume to best diary and they came to receive their Puffin goody bags in such a wonderful array of costumes.

Just as I was about to head off to the book stall the word came through – the books had sold out! Hardly surprising the number of people there and their obvious enthusiasm for the written word, but still a bit of a shame to go away empty handed. However the delicious cake on offer more than made up for it and I suspect I’ll be spotting this book in all the shops.

With endorsements from authors such as Jaqueline Wilson who says: "A brilliantly told, ultra modern story about a significant six months in eleven year old Olivia's life - it should be sold with a large box of tissues!" I think Dandelion Clocks is going to be a massive hit and Rebecca Westcott is definitely an author to watch.

So congratulations to Rebecca and do also keep an eye out for her next book, Violet Ink, which publishes in July this year.

Kate Kelly is a marine scientist by day but by night she writes children’s books. Her debut novel Red Rock, a Cli-Fi thriller for teens, is published by Curious Fox. She lives in Dorset with her husband, two daughters and assorted pets and blogs at http://scribblingseaserpent.blogspot.co.uk/