Last night I was lying in bed scrolling through my phone when I came across a short clip about octopuses. Three hearts. Blue blood. I stared at the screen, thinking: three hearts. Does that mean they feel sadness more deeply? Then I remembered Remarkably Bright Creatures, a story in which an octopus befriends a 70-year-old woman and helps her reconnect with a grandson she lost 30 years ago. It sounds absurd at first, but the story stayed with me.
Tula works the night cleaning shift at the aquarium. She mops floors, wipes glass, and talks to the octopus every night. People might see her as lonely, but really she is just too tired to navigate real human interactions. Reading that, I realized how much I relate. Sometimes talking to a plant or a cat feels simpler than trying to explain yourself to another person. Tula’s son disappeared into the sea decades ago. She has never moved on, never remarried, never thrown away his toys. Her life seems paused, waiting for retirement, waiting for death – until Marcellus, the octopus, begins leaving subtle clues that shift everything.
The narrative structure is unusual. Half the story is from Tula’s perspective; the other half from Marcellus’s first person point of view. The dual perspective could have felt gimmicky or childish. But Van Pelt writes it withrestraint. Marcellus says: “I have lived for three years, which is about eighty or ninety in your human years. I have seen countless faces, and Tula is the only one who never treated me like a fish.” That line hit me, not because it was manipulative, but because being treated as a separate, respected being is so rare – even if that being is an octopus.
Through Marcellus, Tula reconnects with her long lost grandson, Cameron, a young man adrift, bouncing between odd jobs, barely scraping by. After they reunite, Marcellus dies, the aquarium closes, and Tula finally tosses the old necklace into the sea. I read that part repeatedly. Not because it is complicated, but because it is quietly profound. Letting go, I realized, is not forgetting; it is choosing whether to hold on or release something, without needing it to validate your existence.
What struck me most was not the search for Cameron, but the simple act of being seen. Tula thought she was alone, but Marcellus watched her every night. Marcellus thought he was trapped, but Tula noticed him every time she passed his tank. That mutual attention – quiet, patient, unnoticed – felt more like companionship than blood relations ever could. Later I went to an aquarium and stood in front of the octopus tank for a long while. A kid tapped on the glass; a staff member scolded him. But I found myself thinking: maybe the creature inside was counting everyone who came by.
The title Remarkably Bright Creatures lingered in my mind. After finishing the book, I kept wondering: who is the “remarkably bright creature”? Is it Marcellus, or Tula, who drags herself through long nights but never stops watching? Those quiet, overlooked beings-cat, plant, familiar stranger-might be watching us intheir own way. We just never notice.
