For the Feminist Review

I’m a huge fan of Tracy Chevalier. Like a lot of people, I began with Girl with a Pearl Earring, and have since made my way through all but one of her other books. So of course I leapt at the chance to sample her newest offering.

Like all her books, Remarkable Creatures begins with something tangible. In Pearl Earring it was a Vermeer painting, and The Lady and the Unicorn explained the origin of a famous medieval tapestry. This time, the inspiration is a sketch of a most unusual woman.

Mary Anning is a working class girl living on the southern coast of Britain. The people there often host tourists and sell them “curies,” curiosities, as souvenirs. Only recently have men of learning begun to study and classify these curies as fossils. Mary has “the eye” for spotting them, and she is keeping her family afloat by hunting fossils along the beach.

Read more: http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2010/03/remarkable-creatures.html