book about mary anning written by tracy chevalier

Life itself was far messier, and did not end so tidily, with the heroine making the right match. One of Miss Austen’s books had even featured Lyme Regis, but I did not read fiction and could not be persuaded to try it. It’s as if Chevalier knew Austen went there and decided to draw on Austen’s current popularity by making the connection: There are also a couple of rather gratuitous references to Jane Austen and her novels, gratuitous because the main characters don’t read novels and the reference to Austen adds nothing significant in terms of plot or characterisation. (For a humorous review of an unsubtle book, do read Kerry, aka Hungry Like the Wolf, on Ken Follett’s The pillars of the earth.) Here is a bit of petulance that sounds rather silly in the first person voice of a supposedly mature Elizabeth:Īs angry as I sounded, I was also secretly pleased that Colonel Birch had discovered the value of my fish enough to want one for himself.

Describing something, such as a character’s emotions, when it should be (and usually is) apparent.

Ladies were called “miss” while they still had a chance of marrying.

Here is Elizabeth over-explaining Mary’s calling her “Ma’am”, when she’d previously called her “Miss”:Īnd she was calling me “ma-am” now. The best writing shows, not tells, but there was way too much telling in this book, and it falls into two main types:

However, it did, and this was mostly due to a lack of subtlety. In other words, I didn’t expect exciting or innovative prose, but I did expect writing that wouldn’t bother me. It’s not that I expected a lot, really, but I did expect a little more than I got. So, my appetite was whetted.īut, I must say, I was somewhat disappointed. Not only did she visit Lyme Regis, but she set a significant scene in Persuasion there*. You see, it is set in Lyme Regis in the early 1800s, and that rings a special bell for me! Yes, it’s to do with Jane Austen.

Tracy Chevalier would not normally be high priority for me, but this book intrigued me because of its period and setting. The others are David Mitchell’s The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America. I am experiencing such a period now as Tracy Chevalier‘s Remarkable creatures is the third book I’ve read recently to deal in some way with the first decades of the 19th century. Most readers experience, I think, periods of reading synchronicity when we read books in close succession that are related in some way. Cover image courtesy HarperCollins Australia

Book about mary anning written by tracy chevalier