Loneliness, Loss and Human Connection in Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures

Abstract

Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022) authored by Shelby Van Pelt is a contemporary novel. It is a story about loneliness, loss, grief, companionship, family dynamics, and the goodness of human connections. The fictional coastal town setting of Sowell Bay, in Washington, the US, brings together all the unrelated individuals whose lives are influenced by differing experiences of loss and isolation. Tova Sullivan is a seventy-year-old widow, struggling with the unsolved disappearance of her son, Erik and the death of her husband, Will. Cameron Cassmore is a thirty-year-old man, lonely, abandoned in his childhood by an absent mother and an unknown father, has an uncertain identity. Marcellus, a highly intelligent giant Pacific octopus, experiences another form of sadness through captivity and separation from his natural environment. Besides them, Ethan, Avery, the Knit-Wits, Aunt Jeanne, and other people of the Sowell Bay community show different types of loneliness, loss, care, and companionship. This study examines Van Pelt’s portrayal of loneliness as physical isolation and an emotional condition arising from bereavement, abandonment, ageing, displacement, unresolved questions, and the inability to communicate inner suffering. And loss as a tough experience involving death, disappearance, broken relationships, lost freedom, unrealised possibilities, and imagined futures is also explored. The study focuses on the novel’s development which goes from isolation and loss faced by the characters, to connection, belonging, healing, and renewed hope.