octopuses

Book Review: SEA CHANGE by Gina Chung

| Jessica Crawford
I’m trying my hand at book annotation! Pictured is Sea Change by Gina Chung (with a sleeping German shepherd for scale)

Sea Change is literary fiction about Ro, the thirty year old daughter of Korean immigrants. A history of loss has shaped her into a rather dysfunctional adult. Her marine biologist father disappeared on a research trip while she was a teen, she and her BFF are at odds, and her boyfriend left her (and the planet) on a mission to colonize Mars. Now Dolores, the giant Pacific octopus at the aquarium where she is employed, and one of her last remaining links to her father, is being sold. Ro deals with all of her loneliness and fears that anything good is only going to be taken from her by neglecting everything in her life except for her quest to stop feeling anything at all (with the help of a drink or two, or ten).

This is the story of Ro discovering that if she wants to escape the rut she is stuck in, she’ll need to learn to appreciate the things she does have without constantly tiptoeing around the possibility of losing them. I may have teared up during a scene about saying goodbye to the octopus…

Book Review: REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES by Shelby Van Pelt

| Jessica Crawford

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt is heartwarming literary fiction about the relationships that sustain us throughout the course of life.

POV alternates among three characters:

  1. 👵 Tova Sullivan, an elderly widowed Swedish immigrant whose son drowned in the sea under mysterious circumstances when he was 18 years old, and who works cleaning at the Sowell Bay Aquarium because she feels the need to keep busy even if she doesn’t need the money
  2. 🤷‍♂️ Cameron Cassmore, a highly intelligent yet deadbeat 30 year old whose search for a means to pull himself up out of the rut of his life leads him to Sowell Bay, Washington

and

  1. 🐙Marcellus, a(n even more?) highly intelligent Giant Pacific Octopus who resents being captive at the aquarium and who just can’t even with humans anymore

The relationships that develop among these characters are quite touching. Family and growing old are themes throughout the book.

The parents will grow old atop this mountain of a family they’ve built, and even if parts of it crumble from time to time, there will be enough left to support them.

The characters that comprise the Knit-Wits, the groups of septuagenarians who get together for regularly scheduled lunches, were each so realistic—I could picture people from my real life who matched each of them almost to a T.

Overall this is a sad but ultimately heartwarming tale, and it gets bonus points for naming a secondary octopus Pippa the Grippa!

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Book Review: THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA by Ray Nayler

| Jessica Crawford

🐙 Come for the octopuses, stay for the story about communion, consciousness, and control!

The Mountain in the Sea is science fiction set in a near future when many industries are fully automated with AI. The Con Dao archipelago of Vietnam is a wildlife sanctuary for many species, including octopuses so intelligent they just might rivals humans. A tech corporation with a vested interest in seeing what can be learned from these animals has sent in researchers and sealed the area off, protecting it by deadly means if necessary.

The characters that this book primarily follows are:

Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist who struggles with the indifference people feel for the things that don’t personally affect them, and who learns the importance of connection, making oneself understood, and striving to understand others even if it doesn’t mean always agreeing with each other.

Rustem, a Tartar hacking genius who may have gotten involved in something bigger than he realized.

Eiko, a young Japanese man enslaved on an automated fishing rig.

Other characters include a badass mercenary security specialist from a nunnery, a scientist seeking mastery of creating consciousness in an attempt to fend off her own loneliness, and an android whose very existence puts them at risk from those who feel threatened by the idea of a nonhuman mind. Some of the verbal exchanges between the android and the security agent were a joy, very funny!

The octopuses feature a lot less in this book than I thought they would – I mean, a good portion of it is ABOUT the octopuses, but they actually only show up in a handful of scenes. It’s more about the people studying them, and how the world both exist in has been shaped by conscious ingenuity and all the good and bad it creates.

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