tracy chevalier remarkable creatures a novel

I felt like a stocking turned inside out. It was as if I'd touched a hot coal, and I could smell singed flesh and sense there was pain, yet it weren't painful. Then there was a noise, like all the trees falling down round me, and a bright, bright light, which was like looking at the sun. As she held me tight I looked up and saw the pattern of black leaves against a white sky. Then a storm blew in, and a woman-not Mam-picked me up and brought me under a tree. I was in a field, where there were horses and riders performing tricks. I shouldn't remember it, for I was little more than a baby. © 2009 HarperCollins (Ljudbok): 9780007316212Table of Contents Cover Page Title Page Dedication Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Postscript The reader's patience Further Reading Other Books By Copyright About the Publisherĭifferent from all the rocks on the beach Lightning has struck me all my life. Despite their differences in age and background, Mary and Elizabeth discover that, in struggling for recognition, friendship is their strongest weapon. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty and barely suppressed envy. Luckily Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly, intelligent Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who is also fossil-obsessed. Even nature is a threat, throwing bitter cold, storms, and landslips at her. In an arena dominated by men, however, Mary is soon reduced to a serving role, facing prejudice from the academic community, vicious gossip from neighbours, and the heartbreak of forbidden love.

When she uncovers unknown dinosaur fossils in the cliffs near her home, she sets the scientific world alight, challenging ideas about the world’s creation and stimulating debate over our origins. In the early nineteenth century, a windswept beach along the English coast brims with fossils for those with the eye…įrom the moment she’s struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness.

Tracy Chevalier’s stunning novel of how one woman’s gift transcends class and gender to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century.Ī revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship.

‘It is a stunning story, compassionately reimagined’ Guardian

Tracy chevalier remarkable creatures a novel