I can definitely say Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt is the best book that included an octopus narrator. So I don’t seem to be damning it with faint praise, let me say it would be a really good book even if it had all been narrated by non-cephalopods. But I would also like to say that Marcellus the octopus is possibly the character with whom I most connected emotionally.

The book is mainly set in the fictional small town of Sowell Bay, Washington, home of the Sowell Bay Aquarium and its star attraction, Marcellus, the giant Pacific octopus. The story is written in third person, with the thoughts of most of the human characters being revealed, but occasionally, a chapter is thrown in from the perspective of Marcellus. Great humor, but also deep melancholy, is derived when we witness an event or idea from a human perspective compared to that of Marcellus, who sees his entire life as a long imprisonment at the hands of inferior beings who completely misunderstand and underestimate him. He looks at the people outside his tank with intelligent but detached curiosity. There is one exception to this, though, as he grows quite attached (a pun you’ll understand when you read the book) to Tova, the cleaning lady and only person who seems to understand just how bright and despondent Marcellus is.

There are two main narratives that the author deftly weaves into one larger story about love and loss and finding and knowing one’s place in the world. One involves the previously mentioned Tova, a 70-year-old widow who is still, after decades, trying to come to peace with the loss of her son, who died in a boating accident the summer after his senior year in high school. The circumstances of his death along with the murky events of his life in the days leading up to it haunt her all these years later. The other involves a brilliant but shiftless young man named Cameron, who has never fully recovered from a childhood in which his father was completely nonexistent and his mother, a seemingly sweet but hopelessly drug-addled woman, essentially abandoned him to the care of his also sweet but daffy aunt. Their stories come together when Cameron unintentionally moves from the California desert to Sowell Bay, chasing a trail that he hopes will lead to his father. He gets a job filling in for Tova at the aquarium after she takes a spill and injures herself. This is where Marcellus comes in, but I won’t say more. You’ll have to read it for yourself.

I really loved this book. It was a recommendation from a whip-smart, well-read friend, so I knew it would be good, and I was right. It covers all the emotional bases, and you find yourself rooting for every character, even when they seem to be hopelessly incapable of getting out of their own ways on the path to finding contentment in life. I highly recommend this. Read it–you’ll be glad you did.