In 2013, Shelby Van Pelt, a former financial consultant, took a writing class at Emory University, Atlanta , where one of her assignments involved composing a story from an unusual point of view. She picked an octopus for the exercise, a wise and droll protagonist she wanted to call Marcus Aurelius after the great Roman emperor who lived in 121-180 CE.
“Based on feedback from my critique partners, I eventually mashed up his name to Marcellus,” Van Pelt says on a video call from her home in Chicago. “Just like the stoic philosopher, Marcellus contemplates his death everyday without getting emotional, treating it as just a part of his life cycle,” she adds.
We are meeting to talk about the forthcoming movie adaptation of Remarkably Bright Creatures, Van Pelt’s hugely successful debut novel centred around her unlikely octopus hero, which releases on Netflix on 8 May. As a reader who enjoyed the book, I have my fears about Marcellus becoming too cartoonish while being translated to another medium. But Van Pelt is happy with the outcome.
“In the movie, Marcellus’ monologues (which appear like journal entries in the book) have been changed to voiceovers (by Alfred Molina),” she says. “He has been digitally created, but he isn’t doing anything crazily human-like, like carrying a tray, for instance.” Of course, the plot had to be streamlined for the sake of brevity. “It is, in a sense, its own story,” she adds. “I’m absolutely fine with it because the heart of my novel is still there.” Most of all, she is very excited by the award-winning actor Sally Field playing 70-year-old Tova, one of the key characters of her book, who was inspired by Van Pelt’s own Swedish grandmother.
As a visual writer, Van Pelt likes to cast her characters in her head. “It’s helpful to have stand-ins for the people I am writing about, and Sally Field was my go-to for Tova,” she says. “She is petite, serious, but can also be funny, a quiet presence on screen. An actor who can convey so much with a look—just think of her performances in Mrs Doubtfire (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994).” Tova, as Van Pelt puts it, is “birdlike, delicate, but steely”, a woman who likes to be in charge of her life, refusing to reveal the slightest hint of her increasing frailty and vulnerability. She isn’t the self-pitying grandma society would like to take care of.
Remarkably Bright Creatures was published in 2022 and has sold over 1.5 million copies till date. In 2023, after sales suddenly blew up, The New York Times described it as “one of those increasingly rare success stories: a quiet, quirky literary debut that has been buoyed by bookseller love and word-of-mouth recommendations.” Belonging to the league of feel-good best-sellers—Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (2017), Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (the last two published in 2022 as well) come to mind—it remains one of the most loved novels of our time. Not least because of Marcellus, the endearing and acerbic Giant Pacific Octopus, who pulls strings to bring in a (reasonably) happy ending.
The Giant Pacific Octopus lives for four years, approximately 1,460 days. In Remarkably Bright Creatures, Marcellus’ awareness of his mortality becomes a potent framing device, infusing the plot with tragic urgency. It also connects him with Tova, who lost her only son Erik, allegedly in a boating accident, when he was 18.
After her husband’s death due to cancer, she continues working at the local aquarium in Sowell Bay, a fictional town in the Pacific Midwest. Her “flaw”, if you will, is her fiercely independent streak. She refuses to let even her closest friends into her life, even as she carries a staggering burden of grief. But things take an unexpected turn when Tova ends up befriending Marcellus, who, out of sheer boredom, likes to slip out of his tank and explore his neighbours’ habitats while she is on her nightly cleaning duties.
As Marcellus goes around snacking on sea cucumbers and prodding into nooks and crannies with his many tentacles, Tova treats him like a confidant, not quite aware that the octopus is more sentient and sympathetic than he lets on. When Tova is laid low by a sprain, a young man named Cameron takes over her work temporarily, becoming the third wheel in her relationship with Marcellus. Soon, the octopus becomes an indispensable part of their routine, a therapeutic presence, who brings solace to his human friends.
“I have two cats at home, who are a bit octopus-like, in that they sit on my desk when I work and observe me closely. They offer quiet comfort, acting as non-judgmental listeners, just as Marcellus does for Tova,” Van Pelt says. “Sometimes when you are hurting, or having trouble processing your feelings, you don’t need another human being but someone who just listens. I’ve had dogs, cats and lizards do that for me.”
Van Pelt grew up in Tacoma, in Washington State, close to the ocean. Her daily life intersected with sea creatures, giving her an informal education in marine biology. “Growing up, I didn’t appreciate the specific aspects of the subject that may have felt weird or cool to people from other places,” she says. “I remember going to day camps on the beach and encountering so many anemones, octopuses, geoducks—some of the oddest animals in the world.” It was only much later, after she had left home for college, that Van Pelt came to love and miss the extraordinary varieties of life forms she grew up with. Writing this novel, she admits, was one way for her to reconnect with the past, a ”love letter to my hometown.”
As luck would have it, around the time Van Pelt was querying her novel with agents, naturalist and documentary filmmaker Craig Foster’s much-acclaimed movie, My Octopus Teacher (2020), was released. It chronicled his relationship with a wild common octopus in a kelp forest near Cape Town in South Africa. It was a true story of human-animal bond, forged with loving gentleness over a year, a version of which Van Pelt had explored in her novel as well.
“It was a stroke of good luck to have the movie enter the pop culture sphere at the time it did,” she says. “It basically corroborated some of the things I had written about—that octopuses can ‘make friends’, they have curiosity, and will go out of their way to see certain individuals or participate in certain routines in ways that pets like cats and dogs do.” That Marcellus manages to pull off an even more daring act is due to Van Pelt’s remarkably bright imagination.