I know, this book is not great literature but for some reasons I really enjoyed it and will count it to my favourite bokks. The story is about Mary Anning, who lived in Lyme Regis and since she was a girl uncovered fossils of at the time unknown creatures. Elisabeth Philpot, an educated woman from London,was forced to move to Lyme Regis with her sisters, because in the family was not enough money for all the sisters to marry. She started to hunt for fossils as well and despite their diffrent age More...

What happens when you discover something that could change your worldview forever? Does the world stop?

No, of course not, life goes on, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Remarkable Creatures focuses on two women who search for fossils - one so she can eat, the other out of curiosity. When they find a fossil that contradicts religion's view of the origins of the earth, the practical appreciates the money and added business fame brings and the curious are concerned, dissatisfied by More...

* I'm reviewing an ARC copy*

My first Chevalier novel and I'm in love. I have Girl with a Pearl Earring & The Lady and the Unicorn sitting on my shelf and I cannot wait to devour those.

I'm not well read in the historical fiction genre but if they read like this, I'm a fan!

The novel is about two "spinsters" who develop an unlikely friendship over their love of combing the beaches and cliffs for fossils. Both of these women, Mary & Elizabeth, are social outcasts in their own respective wa More...

Read a review on this one and think I will like it. I love hunting for archeological finds and this one is about two women who hunt them together. Tracy Chevalier was browsing a museum on the south coast of England and saw that specimens of fossils were found by this woman and built a fictional story around what her life might have been like.
I adored Chevalier's Girl With A Pearl Earring so I'm hoping this comes even close.
Fifty pages in and hooked.The feeling I have as I read this book is sim More...

"She sells seashells" . . . .

People have been trying to wrap their heads and words about the story of Mary Anning for a long time, including Tracy Chevalier here in Remarkable Creatures.

Remarkable Creatures doesn't have the same sure hand or intricately drawn world as Girl with a Pearl Earring, but Chevalier's own curiosity in her subject can not be doubted as you can see in this Tracy Chevalier ">BBC slide show narrated by Tracy Chevalier and this Barnes and Noble Studio beach walk intervie More...

Tracey Chevalier is one of my auto buy authors and has been since I read first Falling Angels, and then Girl with a Pearl Earring. This is why I bought this book, despite not really having more then a passing curiousity about fossils. The book is based in the 1800s and tells the story of two real people; Miss Elizabeth Philpott and Miss Mary Anning it slightly fictionalizes their lifes, although the events that happen in the book especially regarding the discovery of fossils are correct and thin More...

Another winner by Chevalier...I had never heard of Mary Anning and as I read this, it again dawned on me how many women have been erased and disappeared from history because of sexism and male prejudice during the times they lived in...Anning was a major paleontologist who was completely self taught, living in poverty, and discovered several important prehistoric fossils from the Jurassic period that challenged the conventional thinking of the time about creation, the age of the earth, and survi More...

Can you tell I'm on vacation?! Though I have decided that's the state I am in for the rest of my life, so I should not have to ask myself or "you" :)! Someone who visited our casa told us this was a great read and so I read it. I didn't think it was great but I did appreciate the research that Tracy Chevalier did to write it and her artful determination to rebirth an unknown woman in England who was finding dinasaurs when the Christians there were not ready to think that God created creatures th More...

Chevalier depicts people who believe that God created human beings just a few thousand years ago. The setting "Remarkable Creatures" is in the English town of Lyme Regis in the early 19th century. (You might know this quiet resort village from Jane Austen's "Persuasion!" Two hundred miles north, a toddler named Charles Darwin will someday evolve into the world's most controversial scientist.)

Mary Anning was an unjustly forgotten, real-life figure in 19th-century paleontology. She was the daughte More...

This book had all the makings of a remarkable book: a female fossil hunter in the early 1800s whose contributions to paleontology have been overlooked; new science challenging long-held religious beliefs... As you delve into the book you realize how ground breaking the events of the novel are. If there were creatures buried in the earth that no longer lived on land that meant that God had made a mistake! Or that Genesis as they knew it didn't make sense - if God made Heaven and Earth first and t More...

Remarkable Creatures is about the stories of two women (both actual historical figures) who live in a small town by the English seaside and share a passion for finding fossils - Elizabeth Philpot, a genteel if not very wealthy spinster, and Mary, a poor working girl whose family struggles to survive.
The book has many wonderful elements and delves into a fascinating piece of early scientific history, as scientists sought to understand the fossils they were finding and what they meant for their u More...

Finished: I am glad that is over! I think I chuckled maybe once. The prose was stilted. I have never run into such a bunch of miserable souls. A huge disappointment. I absolutely adored this author's book Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Through page 183: Ahhhh, I am laughing. The two main woman characters are jealous of each other, and it's quite amusing. Of course a man is invoved. Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot are two real people and the two central characters of the book. The story is told alt More...

mary anning and elizabeth philpot are friends that have an interest in hunting fossils on the shores of england. anning makes strides in the field when she unearths some rare bones never found before.

the friendship between the women is one forged in the mutual interest of finding remarkable creatures. but also because it is during a time when there are no advocates for women in science and so these two must stand strong together in the face of a partriarchial area of studying like all chevalier More...

Really enjoyed this, not the sort of book I would have picked up normally but am so glad that I did. The book moved along at a good pace and I enjoyed the style in which it was written. Fossils have now become interesting for me......

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier is loosely based upon the real story of Mary Anning, a fossil collector leaving in Lyme Regis (SE coast of England), in the early 1800s. Mary is famous for having discovered several complete fossils (ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs) at a time when it was not considered appropriate for women to be involved in scientific pursuits. Mary, however, loves fossils, has an eye for finding them, and needs the income from selling them as "curies" to tourists to support More...

4e de couverture : "La foudre m'a frappée toute ma vie. Mais une seule fois pour de vrai" Dans les années 1810, à Lyme Regis, sur la côte du Dorset battue par les vents, Mary Anning découvre ses premiers fossiles et se passionne pour ces "prodigieuses créatures" dont l'existence remet en question toutes les théories sur la création du monde. Très vite, la jeune fille issue d'un milieu modeste se heurte aux préjugés de la communauté scientifique, exclusivement composée d'hommes, qui la cantonne d More...

This book was chosen by my book club. I was very happy with this choice. While it is fiction it is based on the real life of Mary Anning. Mary is poor and uneducated, but she finds fossils on the English coast that others miss. This is pre Darwin time and people look for modern day animals or plants to be what they are seeing in the fossils. Then Mary finds a dinosaur's remains. People insist it is the remains of a crocodile. But Mary and her friend Elizabeth - a middle-class spinster who also l More...

This week I read Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. Chevalier wrote the popular The Girl With the Pearl Earring, a historical novel about the Dutch Realism painter Vermeer. A couple of years ago, The Dixie Divas read Burning Bright, another historical fiction about William Blake. I have read all of Chevalier's novels; she is one of my favorite writers. My favorite of all Chevalier's books is The Lady and the Unicorn.

Remarkable Creatures is about the unlikely friendship between Elizabeth Ph More...

Tracy Chevalier has a large following of readers who enjoy her historical novels. I have not been one, often finding her sex scenes gratuitous, tacked on for modern readers, and not always fitting the historical ‘feeling’ of her stories. However ‘Remarkable Creatures’ is a different kind of novel for Chevalier, more faction than fiction, as it is about two unusual women who changed the way people thought about the world back in the 19thc.

Those of us who grew up near beaches or rivers, where fi More...

Fact-based historical fiction (1820s) that shines a light on two women rarely highlighted in history: Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. These two women develop an unlikely friendship, even with differences in their ages and social class. The two bonds they strongly share are their knowledge and interest in fossils, and their struggle for recognition among men of science due to their sex and social class. The story is especially interesting in the context of changing thought. Fossils had not bee More...

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
2 Stars

Told in alternative voices of Elizabeth Philpot and Mary Anning, the Philpot sisters have moved from London to Lyme Regis because their only brother is getting married and moving into the London family home. The four sisters are spinsters, and boy is Elizabeth obsessed with the fact that they are spinsters, and feel akward in the new community. Elizabeth befriends young Mary, who was struck by lightning as a baby and has a penchant for finding fossil More...

I have to agree with my darling daughter, Kristen. This was a great book that I really didn't want to read. I kept putting it off even though Kris told me it was great. (I can't tell you how many times I had to renew this book from the library!) November was a really good reading month for me. I need to learn to listen to my daughter better, though, and I should have read this book sooner. I even made Mike read it and he liked it even though it is a bit of a women's book. (not a chic book or eve More...

Rating: 3* of five

The Book Description: A voyage of discoveries, a meeting of two remarkable women, and extraordinary time and place enrich bestselling author Tracy Chevalier's enthralling new novel

From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear that Mary Anning is marked for greatness. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, she learns that she has "the eye"—and finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliff More...

Remarkable Creatures is the fictional story of real historical figures, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. In the nineteenth century, Mary and her brother discovered an intact dinosaur fossil. Their discovery challenged the thinking of the day where many could not imagine that God would allow any of his creations to go extinct. It is also the story of the friendship of two women who share a love of fossil hunting and science in a time when women were not supposed to concern themselves with such More...

It’s hard to dislike Chevalier’s novels, especially if you enjoy historical fiction about famous (or even not-so-famous) figures. I love how Chevalier seamlessly builds a story around the personal and professional lives of these figures. Her work is always a pleasure to read, and goes down smooth. Remarkable Creatures follows her other enjoyable novels, except this time it focused on science instead of the art/literature/music that she generally writes about. In this novel, we learn about the di More...

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier is a historical fiction novel based on the life of female fossil hunters Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. Mary Anning was a working class young girl when she started finding fossils or "curies" (curiosities) with her father on the beaches at Lyme Regis, England, in the 19th century. Her father died and she continued to collect curies in order to sell them to support her family. Elizabeth Philpot, twenty years Mary's senior, was an unmarried gentlewoman w More...

One fourth grade reading book that I taught from early in my teaching career had a short essay on Mary Anning. A poor girl with little formal schooling, she had a fascination with the fossils that could be found on the white cliffs of her community in southern England. So, it was fun to meet up with her in this book. Eventually she and her brother found the first fossils of creatures that were eventually named ichthyosaurus and pleisiosaurus. Mary received support from Elizabeth Philpot, an educ More...

The hitorical tale of Mary Anning, the reknown fossil collector and dealer in England in the 1800s. Mary was responsible for a number of important finds in the region of Lyme Regis where she lived, and was the first together with her brother, Joe, to discover a complete ichthyosaur skeleton to be properly identified and which was eventually sold to the British Museum.

This historical novel covers her life from the time she was struck by lightning as a baby in the arms of a neighbor, to adulthood More...

Every so often, I find a book that seems as if it were written specifically with me in mind. Remarkable Creatures is one such book. At its most elementary level, it is a book about two women of different social class in nineteenth century England, how a shared interest allows them to overcome their differences, their falling out over a man, and their eventual coming back together.

What makes this novel different is that one of these ladies is a middle-class spinster, living with her three spinst More...