C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MAY 23 , 2022
compelling elements — mainly,
its characters.
Cameron’s journey — his re-
union with the man he thinks is
his father; his burgeoning ro-
mance with Avery, a hot-mama
surf-shop owner in Sowell Bay;
and his bumbling efforts to
man up to adulthood after get-
ting a gig at the aquarium —
while engaging to read, is noth-
ing special.
What makes the book so mem-
orable and tender is Van Pelt’s
depiction of Tova and her insis-
tence on aging like a responsible
person should. Much like Kent
Haruf’s practically minded Ad-
die Moore in “Our Souls at
Night” or a much less insuffer-
able version of Elizabeth Strout’s
straight-shooting Olive Kitter-
idge, Tova won’t have anyone
fussing over her — especially
jolly old Ethan, the Shop-Way
grocery store owner who’s been
sweet on her for ages.
Instead, Tova is set on getting
rid of her belongings, selling the
house her father built and check-
ing herself into a nurs-
ing home, despite every-
one’s objections: “I am
not like you and Mary
Ann and Barbara,” she
says to the Knit-Wits in a
particularly moving
scene. “I don’t have chil-
dren who will come stay
with me when I’ve had a
fall. I don’t have grand-
children who will stop
over to unclog my drain
or make sure I’m taking
my pills. And I won’t put
that burden on my
friends and neighbors.”
(Van Pelt writes in the
acknowledgments that
Tova is based very loose-
ly on her Grandma Anna; her
affection for this “unruffled” and
“stoic Swede” shines through on
every page.)
Then, of course, there’s the
matter of mischievous Marcellus,
whom Van Pelt deftly uses to tie
the book’s threads together while
throwing in a few octopus facts
for good measure. On Day 1,349
of his captivity, for example,
Marcellus shares a sentiment
even the most curmudgeonly of
humans can rally behind: “As a
general rule, I like holes. A hole
at the top of my tank gives me
freedom. But I do not like the
hole in her heart. She only has
one, not three, like me. Tova’s
heart. I will do everything I can
to help her fill it.”
“Remarkably Bright Crea-
tures” could be described as
corny by some or far-fetched by
others. But to those people I say:
pish posh. After all, octopuses
adapt to their environment by
changing the color and texture of
their skin. They can open jars
and fit inside beer bottles. Some
can even recognize and choose to
befriend individuals outside
their species, including humans.
Why shouldn’t an especially wily
one crack a decades-old cold case
and bring people together while
he’s at it?Alexis Burling is a writer and editor
whose work has appeared in the
New York Times Book Review, San
Fr ancisco Chronicle and Chicago
Tr ibune, among other publications.BY ALEXIS BURLINGHumans love a good, old-
fashioned morality tale told from
the perspective of an animal.
“Watership Down,” “Animal
Farm,” “The One and Only Ivan”:
These beloved books, and so
many others like them, take life’s
toughest challenges — death,
belonging, fear, loneliness — and
make them a little easier to
swallow.
Joining the menagerie is Shel-
by Van Pelt’s “Remarkably Bright
Creatures,” an ultimate-
ly feel-good but decep-
tively sensitive debut
about what it feels like
to have love taken from
you, only to find it again
in the most unexpected
places. The best part?
It’s narrated by Marcel-
lus McSquiddles, a giant
Pacific octopus who can-
not only think and feel
as humans do but also
pick locks, squeeze out
of his tank at the aquari-
um to go on late-night
snack runs and serve as
the town’s secret match-
maker.
“Remarkably Bright”
is framed as a mystery, relayed
in two storylines that eventually
converge. The first stars set-in-
her-ways Tova Sullivan, who, at
70 and recently widowed, likes
things just so. When she’s not
lunching and gossiping with
three longtime girlfriends who
affectionally call themselves the
Knit-Wits, she’s volunteering as
a night janitor at Puget Sound’s
Sowell Bay Aquarium and con-
versing with Marcellus as she
putters about cleaning.
For Tova, staying busy is the
key to a content life and a quiet
mind — a respite after too many
years spent obsessing over what
happened to her 18-year-old
golden-boy son, Erik, who was
found at the bottom of a lake
about 30 years ago and whose
death she believes was wrongly
ruled a suicide.
The second narrative involves
down-on-his-luck Cameron, a
30-year-old garage rocker and
odd-jobber whose deadbeat
mother left him with his aunt in
a California trailer park when he
was 9 and never returned. After
too many failed relationships
and lost jobs, he’s headed up to
Sowell Bay on a whim to search
for his long-lost father and shake
him down for overdue child
support.
Astute readers might catch a
whiff of where this is going. But
that won’t detract from the sto-
ry’s effect. Instead, putting the
plot aside frees readers to focus
on some of the book’s moreBOOK WORLDVan Peltmakes asplash withdebut novelREMARKABLY
BRIGHT
CREATURES
By Shelby
Van Pelt
Ecco. 36 8 pp.
$27.99segregated cities in the nation? In
part it’s because in the 1950s and
1960s, the city fathers decided to
build an expressway — a brutally
efficient path from downtown
offices to the growing suburbs —
that effectively cut off the Black
community from the rest of the
community. It destroyed a
beautiful parkway designed by
Frederick Law Olmsted and broke
the back of Buffalo’s then-
growing Black middle class.
The effects of this and other
decisions like it — where to build
a new pro football stadium?
where to develop a huge new
campus for the University of
Buffalo? — have been profound.
Because every one of those
decisions directed the flow of
dollars to places far from the
inner city, deep into the grassy,
monochromatic suburbs.
Predominantly Black
neighborhoods in Buffalo suffer
not only from endemic poverty
but from “under-investment and
over-policing,” wrote Jim Heaney,
editor of Investigative Post, a
Buffalo-based nonprofit news
site, last week. They also suffer
from too little sustained attention
from local media, which has
covered these issues spottily at
best.
It’s not that these topics and
these neighborhoods get nocouldn’t help thinking how much
the Buffalo area would lose if its
daily newspaper were to fall into
the hands of the rapacious hedge
fund that wants to buy the
company that owns it. The
newsroom staff, already
significantly smaller than it once
was 15 years ago, would no doubt
be cut to the bone, as has
happened at virtually every paper
across the country that this hedge
fund has devoured.
That fate must be resisted, at
all costs. But it’s not the only
challenge that journalists in
Buffalo — and everywhere else —
must take on.
Local news needs to take a
harder and more sustained look
than ever before at the ugly
inequality that the massacre
exposed.
The suspect “did not pick a
Tops in Amherst or Lancaster or
Orchard Park,” wrote News
columnist Rod Watson, ticking off
the names of some of Buffalo’s
Whitest suburbs. No, the East
Side supermarket was chosen,
apparently, for one simple reason:
“The Zip code has the highest
percentage of Blacks of any
neighborhood within reasonable
driving distance of his home.”
Why is Buffalo among the most
SULLIVAN FROM C1
MARGARET SULLIVAN
Local news needs
to take harder look
at racial inequities
“That is the true power of
government in America: the
power to let people choose their
own destiny. If you believe that,
then we can begin talking about
how to create a society that is
truly pro-life. We can create a
pro-life America that makes it
easier for the women who want
children to birth those children.
We can create a pro-life America
by requiring employers to give
mothers and fathers paid
parental leave. By offering free
preschool and subsidized child
care for parents who want to
provide for their children by
going to work. By nurturing life
as we know it.
“The issue of abortion will
never be resolved to everyone’s
liking. We will never reach
complete consensus and peace.
But forcing women to bear
children against their will is not
the answer. Outlawing abortion
will not eliminate abortions.
They will still happen, at great
cost to women and to families.
There will be more suffering. It
is not the Christian thing to do.
It is not the American thing to
do. We must limit suffering.
We must pass national
legislation protecting this
necessary and lifesaving medical
procedure.
“Nobody looks forward to
having an abortion. The women
who live in this country — the
women whom our forefathers
did not even bother to imagine
— each and every one of them
has hopes, dreams and plans for
her life. And none of them, as
little girls, ever dreamed of
having an abortion.
“It is on us now, each of us, to
reimagine America again, just as
the 39 men who once signed our
Constitution. But this time, we
can remake it with empathy and
curiosity for all of our citizens.
And in doing so, we will be
emphatically and joyfully
choosing life.”“We talk about abortion as if
it is a matter of life, and it is. It
is a matter of women’s lives. It is
a matter of what kind of life a
woman will be able to build for
herself today, and for her family,
and for her community.
Abortion is also a matter of
family life. It is a matter for
every husband who cares about
his wife and her well-being, and
the life they will build together.
It is a matter for every child that
a woman already has, who
deserve to have a loving,
present and financially stable
mother.
“For many of you, it is also an
issue of the potential lives of
embryos and fertilized eggs. The
question of when life truly
begins is, in the end, a mystery of
God.
“What I do know is that
America is not a theocracy, and
when it comes to mysteries that
are beyond the scope of human
judgment, we must err on the
side of personal freedom and
bodily autonomy. What I do
know is that complex, life-
changing decisions are best
made by the people who will be
most intimately affected by
them. Not by strangers, and
certainly not by the government.
“The question we each must
ask ourselves is not, ‘When does
life begin?’ but rather, ‘Do you
think it is the government’s
business to decide when life
begins?’ Do you think that the
government knows better, in
every circumstance, than a
woman’s doctor? Than a
woman’s own priest or pastor?
Than a woman’s spouse or
partner? Than your daughter,
your sister, your wife?
“Or do you believe, as I do,
that the government’s business is
encompassed in the words that
the Constitution does include:
promoting ‘general Welfare’ and
securing the ‘Blessings of
Liberty’ for each American?to end their pregnancies. I am
speaking out now, because I was
elected to serve this nation, and
serving this nation means
wrestling with what freedoms
we should have, who is allowed
to give them to us and who is
allowed to deny them.
“The Americans who wrote
our Constitution 235 years ago
were lawyers and scientists,
merchants and farmers, all
dreaming a new country into
existence. They were as young as
26 and as old as 81. At the end of
three months of work, in the
summer of 1787, these 39 men
signed their names to the first
draft of their dream and
launched the democracy that we
all fight for and live in and
wrestle with today. Thirty-nine
men.
“The leaked draft opinion
from the Supreme Court hinges
on the idea that the right to an
abortion is not ‘deeply rooted in
our history and traditions,’ that
it does not appear in the
Constitution. Another word that
does not appear in our
Constitution is ‘woman.’ Not
once. Neither does ‘pregnancy’
or ‘motherhood.’ Our founders
imagined a new country, but for
all their brilliance, they did not
imagine a country in which
women would be full citizens.
They were not accountable to
the complexities of women’s
experiences. This was a long,
long time ago, a different time.
“Talking about abortion
means being aware of the
relationship of women to
America’s history and traditions.
How we as a country have
viewed their bodies, their agency,
their personhood. America did
not allow women to vote,
nationally, until 1920. It wasn’t
until 1973 that women could
serve on juries in all 50 states
and 1974 that a married woman
could obtain a credit card
without her husband’s signature.of domestic violence whose
partner prevented her from
taking birth control pills, or the
45-year-old who thought she no
longer needed birth control pills.
“Abortion is a solution that a
woman finds herself seeking
only when something else in her
life has already gone
cataclysmically wrong. And
whether she was always pro-
choice or always believed herself
to be antiabortion, by the time
she sets foot in a clinic, she has
one thing in common with every
other patient there: She didn’t
spend her life dreaming of this.
She didn’t make her decision
lightly.
“It’s no secret I have struggled
with this issue. I am a faithful
Catholic. And I know what it
means to be a parent: the pride,
the pain. I know life is precious.
When it comes to abortion, I
have found it difficult to sort out
what I believe and to find the
right words to convey those
beliefs. I am, as Moses said, slow
of speech and tongue. For nearly
50 years, nearly the entirety of
my political career, I have not
had to find exactly the right
words, because abortion was a
settled legal right.
“But now a draft opinion has
leaked from the Supreme Court,
which would drastically limit the
ability of women in this country
HESSE FROM C1
MONICA HESSE
Presidential
words we
need on a
tough issue
DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POSTOur columnist writes what the president should say about abortion: “We must err on the side of personal freedom and bodily autonomy.”
our economic system, people who
have been preyed on, extracted
from,” she told Democracy Now,
as she called for bold, reparative
change across the country as well
as in Buffalo.
This month’s sickening tragedy
— driven by racism and aided by
the results of racism — should be
a blaring wake-up call. It will
come too late for those who died
but perhaps in time to improve
the lives that remain.watchdog role.
That should change. It’s hard to
imagine what coverage areas
could be more important.
Journalism, of course, is only
one part of what needs to happen,
as India Walton, the democratic
socialist who made a surprisingly
strong run for Buffalo mayor last
year, pointed out recently.
“We live in communities that
have been redlined, people who
have been intentionally left out ofbeen strong investigative
reporting about public-school
inequity and about the high cost
of being poor, but also episodes of
neglect and bad judgment. Now,
hamstrung by budget cuts and
with fewer reporters to do the
digging, local media simply
doesn’t pay enough attention to
following the money at City Hall
or to the floundering city schools.
There’s too little accountability.
Not enough of the all-importantcoverage, or no support from
commentators or editorial pages.
But it hasn’t been nearly enough,
and that goes back a long way.
The Buffalo News — like the
region’s civic leadership — didn’t
seem to have the best interests of
the Black community as a top
priority as decisions were being
made about the expressway, the
football stadium and the
university.
In more recent years, there hasHEATHER AINSWORTH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
People visit a memorial last week for victims of the Tops supermarket mass shooting in Buffalo, which appeared to be driven by racism.