By Jael Montellano
My former partner and I used to share a joke that, internally, I was a sixty-seven year old woman. It occurred because I received an accidental text message from a girl who, despite my reply of, I’m sorry, you have the wrong number, refused to believe I wasn’t Joey, the crush with which she sought to communicate. You have to be Joey, she repeated. This is the number you gave me.
I’m a sixty-seven-year-old retired teacher from Chicago, I replied to her in a sarcastic moment. I didn’t give you anything.
I don’t believe you, she answered. People that old don’t text.
Flabbergasted by her insistence and ageism, I added, Does it matter?! I’m not Joey!
So it began, the joke. Yet as I read through Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures, the half-forgotten quip, for good or ill, lost its edge. You can tick off the list of commonalities between myself and Shelby’s seventy-year-old protagonist despite being half her age; a recluse with a penchant for haunting public spaces. Granted, my dearest friends are canine and feline; I would never allow an octopus to spiral a tentacle up my arm in greeting like Tova does with Marcellus.
Shelby and I, who share circles within writers’ groups for short fiction, caught up over the launch of her debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures, available for purchase this month. Our conversation follows:
In your acknowledgments, you mention this novel started with a story prompt about unexpected points of view. I think your audience and new readers will agree, an octopus is indeed quite an unexpected point of view! How did this mystery about loss, family, widowhood, and friendship grow out of that seedling?
When I wrote that first scene, I wasn’t really thinking about a novel. I just thought a curmudgeonly octopus was a fun character! Then, as I started expanding it into something longer, I realized I needed to pair the octopus with a human who lacks connection, someone who prefers to hide in their (metaphorical) den. I played with a few different protagonists before landing on an older widowed woman who has no remaining family and who is terrified by the idea of burdening anyone as she ages. Really, Tova would rather just disappear. But then Marcellus the octopus connects with her, and she finds herself telling her story, sharing her feelings, things she has never felt comfortable doing with a human companion.
Was writing Marcellus’ chapters daunting, an utter delight, or something in between? What was the most challenging aspect about writing from the perspective of a giant Pacific octopus?
Utter delight! Although it was a meditative process to put myself in the mindset. I needed more insulation from the real world to get there. Writing much of this book during the pandemic, I did a lot of work in the late evening, after my kids were in bed, and that’s when I did most of my octopus channeling.
Overall, though, Marcellus’s voice came naturally. I think I must have been a crotchety old man in an earlier life because once I’m in the groove, I could go on for hours as Marcellus!
The biggest challenge for me was ensuring reasonable biological accuracy. Obviously, the idea that an octopus can read/communicate is firmly in the realm of fantasy, but I wanted it to feel credible. I don’t have any formal training in marine biology, and I am endlessly grateful for my friends and contacts in the marine bio world for their feedback and help in making Marcellus seem as real as possible.
What wild and profound moments have you encountered with other species and creatures that inspired your approach to writing about Marcellus, the octopus?
I have two cats. We took them in as kittens from a feral cat colony, and they’ve grown up with our household chaos, so they’re pretty much up for anything. They’ll allow my kids to use them as a pillow, pick them up and drag them to tea parties, whatever.
But sometimes, especially when I’m writing at night, one or both cats perch and glare at me and I’m like…that’s an octopus look. The cat is giving me a Marcellus look. Withering judgment.
Early in the pandemic, I signed my daughter up for Outschool, an online platform that has classes about everything. One class was “How to Vibe with Your Cat.” My daughter loved it. I listened along, and one of the instructor’s comments stuck with me: Cats always think they have the best ideas. If they are basking in the sun, they are wondering why you are not basking in the sun, too.
I feel like octopuses must also believe they have the best ideas. And they’re endlessly exasperated with us humans for failing to listen.
There is a great friendship between the main characters, Tova and Marcellus, and while this seems an odd pairing, it’s actually a pairing of two kindred souls that are at the exact same point within the trajectory of their lives; one engrosses itself in adrenaline-pumping heists to stave off the boredom of aquarium diets, the other staves off boredom (and grief) being a meticulous cleaning lady at said aquarium. Why was parallelism important for these characters and their stories?
Both Tova and Marcellus believe they’ve exhausted all their options. When Tova took the aquarium gig, I think, she was not clearly trying to make friends. It was just something to do to pass time; she enjoys cleaning, and fish are easier company than humans. But then friendship finds her anyway, in the form of another soul who is also resigned to live out his days in boredom and solitude. Marcellus and Tova are both stuck, figuratively speaking, and they help get one another un-stuck, which I’ve always thought was a fun thematic expansion on that initial scene where Tova literally helps Marcellus get un-stuck.
The novel is told through several other points of view that complete the story of Remarkably Bright Creatures, namely Cameron and Ethan (and, of course, Tova). How did you arrive at the inclusion of their voices? Why did you reference, but never flashed back, to the mysterious events of the past, i.e. Daphne’s, Jeanne’s or Erik’s points of view? How do you think this affected the telling? (Personally, I think this improved the novel, but I’m curious to your choices).
Well, Cameron is just kind of a disaster, especially at the beginning of the story. I feel like everyone has known a Cameron-type person. They’re frustrating, and when I started creating Cameron, I initially imagined he’d be more of an antagonist, but once I got under the surface with him, I realized that he really isn’t so bad. He’s just stuck in his own narrow view of himself, wearing blinders about his own life’s potential, like everyone else in the book.
Ethan was so much fun to write! He’s the opposite of Tova; as private and reserved as Tova is, Ethan is chomping at the bit to get into everyone’s business in his jolly, well-intentioned way. I figured, who could better be positioned to gather gossip than the town’s only grocer?
Aunt Jeanne is one of my favorite characters and I’m kind of bummed I couldn’t manage to get her more page time. She is also sort of a Tova opposite, at least in their respective relationships with parenthood. At one point, I had a scene where the two women meet, but it ended up getting cut. I would love to explore a potential relationship between them!
As for Daphne and Erik, not including either’s point of view was mostly just a decision about the lens through which readers would get information about the past. Much of the story does take place decades earlier, but I decided not to do flashbacks. So, we only get to see that period through glimpses in Tova’s inner monologue. Not only are those memories thirty years old at this point, but Tova is too practical to spend much time lingering in nostalgia, so the reader’s access to those past events is deliberately sparse.
This story is about many things, the Puget Sound community, the small-town residents of the Pacific Northwest, but it’s also very much about home and family. You currently reside in the Midwest (our home too!) but you were born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, and I know that Tova was inspired by your grandmother. What do you miss most about your native coast? What did you hope to capture within the pages of Remarkably Bright Creatures and Tova in particular?
Yes, Tova is loosely based on my late grandmother. Like Tova, she was this tiny-yet-tough Swedish woman, and she was incredibly warm and loving, yet always wore this stoic shell. After my grandfather died, she lived alone for years. She never cleaned an aquarium, but she did clean church basements, and she often took me along. We were very close. I think, in writing this book; part of me wanted to see what would happen if someone like her could be coaxed out of their habits.
I always knew I wanted to set the story in the Pacific Northwest, but I was particularly glad to have it there during the pandemic. I always miss home, but the ache was particularly acute during that first year of COVID, when traveling wasn’t an option. Being able to submerge myself in my manuscript helped soothe the homesickness.
There’s so much I miss about Washington! The mountains, the mossy forests, the way the skies are impossibly blue in summertime. I miss the people, who truly are like ducks, as Ethan says at one point – the rain rolls right off their backs. I remember being confused at the prevalence of umbrellas when I moved to the other side of the country. Hardly anyone uses umbrellas in Washington. You just put your head down or your hood up and carry on.
The Midwest is lovely too, though! There’s nothing like a prairie sunset.
This is your debut novel! Firstly, congratulations! What did you learn about storytelling that was new to you through the novel-writing process?
Thanks! And here’s where I admit that I learned everything about storytelling on the fly. When I started this novel, I had no idea about acts and beats and stakes and the other elements engaging stories need. Creating the characters came easily, and I was decent at sowing tension between them, but at one point I had, like, a whole novel-length document…without any real plot. It was just a bunch of characters hanging around, getting in one another’s way. So, I scrapped 90% of it and started over. I read craft books (Save The Cat Writes a Novel was a great one) and drafted the whole thing over again, paying more attention to the structure. I still made plenty of missteps but writing with a formula in mind helped.
I don’t think I’ll ever be a plotter or an outliner. My brain just doesn’t work that way. But I love the analogy of writing as a walk through a dark forest, and as the writer, I’m holding a flashlight. I can see a few paces ahead on the trail. I don’t have the whole place mapped out, but I have enough illumination to course-correct when I veer off track. That’s basically my plotting style, I think.
What is currently fascinating you and what project are you working on next?
It’s hard to find a fascination that tops octopuses! And that obsession hasn’t waned. One of the most gratifying, and most unexpected, things about publishing Remarkably Bright Creatures is connecting with other cephalopod lovers and having them send me the coolest videos and articles. No, it does not get old. The inbox can never have too many octopuses. Keep them coming!
The idea of writing a sequel is tempting, but right now, I have a hard time picturing any other octopus replacing Marcellus. My current project is rooted in another area of mystique: the deep woods, instead of the ocean. I’m still early in the first draft, but it’s a story that explores family and community bonds, and has some quirky, unusual, and misunderstood characters. I don’t totally know where it’s going yet, but I’ll somehow figure it out.
When Shelby Van Pelt isn’t feeding her flash-fiction addiction, she’s juggling cats while wrangling children. Her debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures, is available from HarperCollins in May 2022. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she’s currently missing the mountains in the suburbs of Chicago. Find her at www.shelbyvanpelt.com, on Twitter @shelbyvanpelt, and Instagram @shelbyvanpeltwrites.
Raised in Mexico City and the Midwest United States, Jael Montellano is a writer and editor based in Chicago. Her fiction, which explores horror and queer life, features in The Selkie, the Columbia Journal, Hypertext Magazine, Camera Obscura Journal, among others. She holds a BA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Find her on Twitter @gathcreator.